Author: Nancy A. Collins
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World Of Darkness; Fantasy; Paranormal; Supernatural; Adult; Fiction; Urban; Occult & Supernatural; Horror; Science Fiction Fantasy; Vampires; Urban Fantasy
Description: From the Bram Stoker Award–winning author who “pretty much invented the punk vampire thing”: A vampire vigilante is in Deadtown to destroy her own (Seconds Magazine). As the convenience store doors close behind him, DeShawn can already hear the sirens. He sprints down the street, clutching his meager haul, but the police are gaining on him. He turns the corner onto a cobblestoned alley and the sirens stop. The police have turned back, and for a moment, DeShawn feels lucky. It doesn’t last. A crawling man leaps up from the shadows, wraps his arms around DeShawn’s neck, and feeds on his blood. W
Publisher: Open Road Media

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A Dozen Black Roses

A Sonja Blue Novel

Nancy A. Collins

For Lux

Author’s Note

First published in 1996, the original version of A Dozen Black Roses was written as a cross-over with White Wolf Publishing’s World of Darkness® RPG Vampire:The Masquerade®, and incorporated significant elements of their game-play and rules. This edition has been extensively revised and rewritten by the author, who has removed all mention and reference to the World of Darkness®.

DEADTOWN

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

—George Gurdjieff

Chapter One

The city was founded over two hundred and sixty years ago by those who fled the intolerance of their various homelands and sought to build afresh elsewhere. It sits at the head of an estuary, a stone’s throw from the huge bay that first welcomed those settlers who came to this strange new world. This proximity to water shaped its destiny, much as a growing child is shaped by its surrounding environment.

From its earliest days the city’s fortunes were linked to those of sailing ships and those who ply the waves. By the time of the American Revolution it was a bustling seaport and shipyard, with wharves teeming with trade, legal and otherwise. The shipping companies that crowded the waterfront exported tobacco, flour, indigo, and fish to Europe, while accepting darker human cargo from the Gold Coast and beyond.

In the years that followed, the city’s livelihood became even more tightly linked with the sea and the adjoining rivers that occasionally threatened to swallow it whole. In time steelworks and oil refineries arose to build the battleships and freighters of the steam era.

Like all seaports, in the beginning it was a brash and roughshod town—but as the decades turned into centuries, the city matured and became more sophisticated in its pleasures, giving birth to opera houses, museums, coliseums, seminaries, and colleges. There were ups and downs—fires and floods, recessions and inflation—but the city always managed to recover, just as a human body recuperates from various fevers and ills.

The humans who called the city their own grew and thrived, producing sports figures, surgeons, newspapermen, philosophers, statesmen, and poets. The wheels of progress, industry, and business moved in sync without grinding against one another’s gears. It was a city with a Past and a Future.

But then along came the Present.

Fifty years ago the denizens of the inner city began to abandon the brownstones and row houses of their ancestors for the roomier, greener environs of the outlying suburbs, until the only ones left were those too poor or disenfranchised to move. The ancient neighborhoods, once vibrant and alive, began to decline as the working class gave way to working poor.

Forty years ago the wheels of progress and industry began to shift as the shipyards began to mechanize, as did the refineries and steel plants. Fewer and fewer jobs were open to the unskilled and uneducated. Thirty-five years ago the first OPEC embargo drove price of oil from two dollars a barrel to thirty-two. Americans, no longer able to afford to drive the lumbering gas-guzzlers Detroit manufactured, turned to foreign imports. The demand for domestic steel dropped drastically. The wheels of progress, no longer safely lubricated, began to grind its gears very loudly, sending sparks in every direction. Dockworkers, shipbuilders, foundry and refinery employees were laid off in droves. Entire city blocks were abandoned and left to rot.

Thirty years ago the federal government began cutting back on aid to the poor and disadvantaged, leaving the city to face its declining years bereft of services, neglected and abused. What had once been a robust industrial economy gave way to one based on services. College graduates flipped hamburgers and change sheets, while stockbrokers, investment bankers, and realtors drove their Beamers and Jaguars into the slums to score crack. Crime rates soared. Political corruption was everywhere. Gangs began to proliferate, and with their growth came turf-wars. At some point during the heated battles between Glock-toting gangbangers, the city was delivered a wound from which it never fully recovered. For cities are living things. They are born and grow, mature and age. Sometimes they even die. But a city, unlike things made of flesh and blood, will continue to function long after its dead. And those humans that labor busily within the carcass, like so many maggots, are often determined to continue the pretense of life for their own reasons.

Which brings us to Deadtown.

Most humans that dwell within the city are unaware that there is a sector deep within its heart that is a true No Man’s Land. It is not located on any street map. No patrol cars, ambulances, or fire trucks venture into this lost riverside neighborhood. Cries for help are often heard echoing from its dark alleys and twisting streets, they are seldom answered—and for good reason. For Deadtown is the rotting heart of a once-vital metropolis. And what better place for the children of the night to gather than in a city that is already one of the living dead?

“Here ya go,” the patrol cop said, as he handed his new partner a grease-soaked bag full of fast-food. “Your first on-duty midnight gut bomb. Enjoy.”

“Thanks,” the rookie said as he unwrapped his double-cheeseburger.

“Better eat fast,” the veteran advised him, “before we get another call. I can’t tell ya how many times I’ve had to chuck a perfectly good lunch out the window in order to run down some perp.”

As if on cue, the dispatch radio suddenly crackled to life. “One-Baker-Nine. 10-30 in progress at Divine Liquors, at Eastern and Grundy Avenue. Suspect is an African-American male in his early twenties, tall, with white shirt and dark pants. Armed and dangerous.”

“Son-of-a-bitch,” the veteran snarled as he tossed his unfinished meal and soda out the window into the street.

“10-30? That’s armed robbery, right?” the rookie, following his partner’s example.

“Sure is, kid,” the older cop replied. “That’s just a few blocks away—if we get there in time, we stand a chance of catching the bastard.”

Sirens wailing and lights flashing, the patrol car raced through the city streets. As they got within a block of the liquor store, they heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire and saw a man fitting the description of the robber dart out the door and run in the direction of the river.

“Call it in, kid,” the veteran said, as he punched the gas pedal.

“Dispatch, this is One-Baker-Nine. We have eyes on the 10-30 suspect and are in pursuit, headed east on Eastern Avenue. Shots fired at Divine Liquors.”

“10-4, One-Baker-Nine. Emergency personnel in route.”

The headlights of the patrol car illuminated the suspect, who was running like a track star half a block ahead. The armed robber glanced over his shoulder at the rapidly gaining police cruiser, then quickly split off from the main road, heading down a narrow alley lined with trash cans.

“Hold on, kid—this might get a little hairy,” the older cop warned as he whipped the patrol car about and raced down the alleyway, sending plastic trash receptacles flying. A second later they emerged onto a smaller parallel street one block over.

“I see him! There he is!” the rookie crowed, pointing east. “He’s still headed east!”

The patrol car sped after the fleeing robber, sirens wailing like a fury in pursuit of a sinner, its flashing lights throwing garish blue shadows against the facades of the shabby rowhouses tenements that lined the street. Suddenly the hum of wheels against pavement was replaced by the noisy thumpity-thump of a cobblestoned street.

“Holy shit!” the older cop yelped, slamming on the brakes so hard his partner nearly went flying into the windshield.

“What the hell are you doing?” The rookie shouted in disbelief as the veteran threw the patrol car in reverse and began speeding backward as fast as possible.

“I didn’t realize we were this close to The Street With No Name,” his partner replied, a look of genuine fear on his face. Once the patrol car was back on full pavement again, he spun it about and began heading back in the direction of the liquor store.

“What are you talking about?” the rookie asked. “Why aren’t we going after him?”

“Because I have a wife, two kids, and a house with a mortgage, who all need me alive and kicking, that’s why,” the veteran replied gruffly.

“But he’s getting away!” The rookie protested as he watched the robber dwindle in the rearview mirror.

“Forget it, kid,” his partner said sadly. “It’s Deadtown.”

DeShawn stared in bafflement as the cop car that had been chasing after him a moment before came to a screeching halt and backed up as fast as it could go, before fishtailing around and speeding off in the opposite direction. Not that he was disappointed in their abrupt and inexplicable departure. His lungs were burning from the exertion of his escape, and his heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. If the cops hadn’t pulled an unexpected about-face, he would have surely run out of steam and ended up trying to shoot his way out, all for a lousy seventy-five dollars and a yard of lottery tickets. Still, he had to wonder what could have spurred the po-pos to give up like that.

As he paused to catch his breath, DeShawn looked around at the neighborhood he found himself in. Although the run-down row-houses, trash-strewn sidewalks and derelict storefronts were not unusual scenery, he could not place the old cobblestone streets and gaslight streetlamps. He glanced about, hoping to find a street sign, but there were none to be found.

As he walked further into the strange neighborhood, DeShawn was struck by the eerie quiet and emptiness of the surrounding streets. Despite the wailing of a police siren and the screeching of ties, not a single person had come to their window or front door to see what was going on. Just then he heard a rustling sound from a nearby alleyway, like someone kicking dry leaves, followed by a piteous mewling noise.

DeShawn peered into the alley and saw a man laying face-down in a pile of garbage, struggling to drag himself toward the street. The man looked middle-aged and dressed in clothes that were far too nice for a neighborhood such as this. No doubt he’d come to score drugs or a cheap fuck, and ended up jacked for his troubles. As the Crawling Man lifted a hand in supplication, DeShawn spotted a flash of gold on his ring finger and what looked like a Rolex about his wrist. He quickly looked around to make the streets were still deserted and then pulled his gun from his waistband before stepping into the shadows.

He knelt beside the Crawling Man and flipped him onto his back like a turtle. Despite his fancy clothes and expensive wristwatch, his victim looked like the worst kind of crackhead, with open sores pock-marking his sallow, gaunt face. The Crawling Man’s eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, and seemed to gleam like dark jewels in the dim light from the street. DeShawn grabbed him by the right hand quickly stripped the Rolex from his wrist. As he paused to admire his new acquisition, the Crawling Man’s hands shot forth, as quick as cobras, and grabbed DeShawn by the arm. He tried to pull away, but his victim’s grip proved as strong as iron.

“Let go of me, motherfucker!” DeShawn snarled, bringing the butt of his gun down on his victim’s skull.

The Crawling Man did not let go, but instead hissed like an angry cat, revealing a pair of very large, very white fangs, and yanked his attacker toward him. DeShawn screamed as the vampire wrapped its arms about him in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace, and dragged him down into the garbage like a trapdoor spider.

Chapter Two

Sonja stepped out of the shadows and onto The Street With No Name. She studied the ancient brick buildings, rough cobblestones and nineteenth-century lampposts, nodding silently to herself. Although the “quaint” street fixtures might fool the unwary tourist, the piles of rotting garbage lumped in the alleyways and gaunt, ashen-faced derelicts lurching down the street were testament to the fact that the neighborhood did not boast any trendy bistros or hip boutiques. Still, for a portion of the city that did not technically exist, The Street With No Name was surprisingly busy. Though most of the storefronts were boarded up, a handful of bodegas seemed to serve a steady stream of customers. She paused in front of one of the windows, peering in at the wall of faded Froot Loops boxes and expired baby-food jars that had been erected against prying eyes. Whatever they sold inside, it certainly wasn’t groceries.

Her attention was attracted by the stutter and flash of neon farther down the street. She moved toward it, keeping a cautious eye on the darkened mouth of the alley, where something mewled to itself and rustled like dry leaves.

In the middle of the block were a couple of bars and a liquor store. One was a titty bar called Dance Macabre; its logo was a woman cradling a serpent with a flickering neon tongue. Directly across the street was a pool hall called Rackham’s. Both establishments had knots of young men dressed in gang colors hanging outside on the curb, glaring at one another across the cobblestone road.

She paused to watch the young men as they talked among themselves, drank forties of malt liquor, and openly smoked reeking marijuana blunts the size of cigars, gun-butts jutting from their waistbands. Both groups seemed of equal size, their members a mix of white, black and brown, which she found surprising, given the city’s tendency toward segregating itself.

The gang loitering in front of the Dance Macabre wore black leather jackets festooned with chrome studs outlining inverted five-pointed stars across their backs. The ones milling outside Rackham’s wore identical leather jackets-except that the backs were decorated with stylized Jolly Rogers, the crossed legbones replaced by spoons. Despite the intense, glowering stares flashing between the two groups, neither side offered to move from their respective posts.

Just then a late-fifties Cadillac, its tail fins raised high like the dorsal of a shark, turned the corner. Suitcase-sized speakers blasted out hip-hop so bass-heavy it made her ribs vibrate in time with the beat.

“Here comes the Batmobile,” a Hispanic youth with a blossom of acne across his thin face announced in an over-loud voice. “Ditch the weed.”

The gang-members outside the Dance Macabre tossed away their joints and pulled out their guns, moving to form a human corridor. The vintage Cadillac pulled up to the curb. The windows were so heavily tinted they looked like mirrors. One of them sprang forward and opened the rear passenger door.

The first person out of the car was a tall, striking woman dressed in low-cut black leather pants and steel-tipped boots. As she turned to face the others, her black leather jacket swung open, revealing that she was naked from the waist up, with stainless-steel rings piercing her nipples. The right side of her head was shaved to the skull, while the hair on the left hung to her waist like a drape of black silk. Her features were strong and clean and would have been considered classically beautiful if not for the plethora of metal hoops and studs dangling from her nose, lips, and brow ridge. In her right hand she held a loaded crossbow. The pierced woman quickly checked the perimeter, then gestured to her fellow passengers that the coast was clear.

An extremely pale young woman, her hair the color of smoke, climbed out of the back seat. She was dressed all in white, from her satin pumps and plunging silk evening gown to the mink coat she clutched in her arms like a life preserver. Her face was so perfect it looked like it belonged on a china doll instead of a living woman. Yet, for all her loveliness, there was something wrong. Her movements were jerky and deliberate, like those of a marionette, as the woman with the crossbow hustled her toward the entrance of the club. Her lavender-colored eyes were as glazed as a tranquilized gazelle’s.

“Mama! Mama!”

The woman in white froze in mid-step, a flicker of emotion suddenly crossing her otherwise placid face. “Ryan?”

“Mama!”

A young boy, no older than five, darted between the gangbangers’ legs. He was thin and ragged, and made a grab for the woman in white’s dress. Her eyelids twitched, like those of a sleepwalker emerging from a dream.

The pierced woman cursed and made a grab for the boy, only to have him scoot between her legs and into the street. She angrily pointed her crossbow at the pimply-faced gangbanger who’d opened the car door for her, who jumped to something resembling attention. “Cavalera! I thought I told you dumb fucks to deal with that little cocksucker! You heard what Esher said about lettin’ that brat get near her! Don’t just stand there with your fuckin’ thumbs up your ass! Get him! And take Cro-Mag with you!” She snarled over her shoulder, revealing strong white fangs and eyes the color of wine as she propelled the woman in white toward the door of the club.

Cavalera and Cro-Mag, a hulking Anglo youth with a lantern jaw, promptly sprinted down the street in pursuit of the boy. The kid had a half-block head-start, but their legs were twice as long, and within seconds they closed in on him. Cro-Mag made a flying tackle, knocking the terrified child to the ground.

“You shoulda kept playin’ football,” Cavalera laughed.

“Nah. Can’t read. If I wanted to stay on the team, I had to take retard classes. Fuck that shit, man!” Cro-Mag grinned as he got to his feet. He held the boy by his shirt collar, dangling him above the ground like a baby rabbit. “What we gonna do with this little shit?”

Cavalera shrugged as he pulled the gun from his waistband. “You heard Decima, homey.”

“Let him go, assholes!”

The gang-members turned in the direction of the voice. An older man with a gray-flecked beard and long flowing silver hair that fell almost to his belt stepped out of the alleyway, quickly closing the distance between them. With his tie-dyed T-shirt, faded jeans, and beat-up high-tops, he could have passed for a hippie version of Gandalf the Grey. The sawed-off shotgun in his hands did not waver. Cro-Mag swore under his breath and let the boy drop. The child instantly regained his footing and scampered off into the shadows.

“That’s good. You did the right thing that time, pal,” the old hippie said. “You-with the gun—you gonna do the right thing, too?”

“Fuck you, old man!” Cavalera spat, trying his best to keep his voice from cracking.

“I may be old, punk, but I still know shit when I smell it! Now throw down the gun or I’ll cut you off at the knees!”

Cavalera bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering. For all his bravado, he looked as if he were about to cry. “We gonna fuck you up, motherfucker!” he spat as he tossed the gun onto the sidewalk. “You fuckin’ with the Five Points Gang, asshole—you fuckin’ with Esher!”

Without being told, the boy scuttled forward and snagged the discarded weapon. In his hands it looked like a vicious oversized toy.

“I’m quakin’ in my boots, punk! Now you, big boy—take out your gun and kick it over to me!” A grumbling Cro-Mag did as he was told. “Good. Now, if you boys had half the brains God gave you, you’d get the hell outta this stinkin’ place and forget you ever heard of Esher,” the old hippie sighed. “But something tells me thinking’s not your strong suit. Get outta here, the both of you—and if I see either of you near the kid again, I’ll let you have it with both barrels! And next time I won’t bother to announce myself!”

As Cro-Mag and Cavalera turned to leave, the old hippie let out his breath and lowered his weapon. Suddenly the pair turned and rushed him. Cro-Mag grabbed the shotgun while Cavalera dove toward the boy.

“Give it up, old man!” Cro-Mag grinned, displaying crooked teeth. “Cav’s right—you’re fuckin’ with the wrong gang!”

A shrill, high-pitched shriek of pain cut the night, and Cro-Mag turned to see his friend collapse in the gutter, a switchblade buried in his chest. The old hippie slammed the butt of the shotgun into his opponent’s jaw. Cro-Mag staggered backward, looking stunned. He touched his dripping mouth, stared at the blood for a moment, then looked at his attacker in disbelief.

“That hurt.”

“I meant it to,” the old hippie replied, driving the butt of the shotgun directly between Cro-Mag’s eyes. This time the gang member went down and stayed there.

The old hippie stood on the curb, gun in hand, and stared down at the Goliath he’d toppled. His hands trembled and his breath came in ragged gasps.

“What you did was very brave. Foolish, but brave.”

He pivoted on his heel, bringing the shotgun to bear on the stranger standing behind him. She was a woman in her early twenties, dressed in tattered jeans, scuffed Doc Martens, a black leather jacket, and mirrored sunglasses, with choppy-cut dark hair. She had the boy in her arms, holding him so that he rode her left hip.

“Jesus, lady!” the old hippie rasped as he lowered his weapon. “Don’t go sneakin’ up on me like that!”

“It’s what I do best,” she replied as she lowered the child to the sidewalk. The boy shot forward like an arrow, wrapping his thin arms around the older man’s waist. He ruffled the child’s hair, then held him at arm’s length, frowning in reproof. “I tell you to be careful when you leave the house, and this is what happens! What’d you do, Ryan?”

“I saw her, Eddie! I even touched her this time! She said my name!”

The man called Eddie rolled his eyes. “Christ-on-a-crutch, kid! You’re gonna get us both killed doin’ shit like that!”

Sonja plucked the switchblade from Cavalera’s lifeless heart. As she wiped off the blood, she nudged Cro-Mag with a steel-tipped boot. “This one’s still alive. I’d put a round through his skull, if I were you.”

Eddie shook his head. “I don’t do shit like that unless I can’t avoid it. Look, lady—I appreciate you steppin’ in like you did—”

“You can thank me later. Now, are you going to keep us standing on the sidewalk the rest of the night or are we going to find someplace to hide? I suspect their posse is already headed this way.”

The older man nodded and scooped up the boy. “You’re right. We better hurry. My place isn’t that far.”

She followed him down the narrow, foul-smelling passageway, emerging onto the next avenue. If anything, it was even more blighted than The Street With No Name. He hurried down a flight of steps to the basement entrance of a crumbling brownstone. He pulled a key ring from his pants pocket and unlocked the door. Once inside, he set the boy down and quickly secured it with a cross-bolt made from an old railroad tie.

The front room of the basement apartment was large, filled with books that spilled from narrowly spaced shelves that reached to the ceiling. The place smelled of old paper and moldering leather. Eddie let out a deep breath and allowed his shoulders to slump, but he did not set aside the sawed-off shotgun he held cradled in his arms.

“You try anything funny, lady, and I’ll spray your brains all over the walls. I’d really hate to have that happen, seeing as how you saved the boy and that I’m such a lousy housekeeper.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Eddie?” the boy whispered.

“What is it, kid?”

“Can I have some cookies?”

He ruffled the boy’s prematurely gray hair. “I don’t know, Ryan—can you?”

The child gave an exaggerated sigh and rolled his eyes. “May I have some cookies?”

“Yes, you may. But leave me some Oreos this time!” he shouted, as the boy sprinted through the towering mounds of books to the rear of the apartment.

“Is he your son?” she asked.

Eddie shook his head and laughed. “Hell no! I don’t know who his daddy is—neither does he. But I just couldn’t let the poor kid starve to death on the street—or worse—could I?”

“His mother was the woman I saw getting out of the car?” “Was she wearing white?”

“Yes.”

“That was her, all right. Her name’s Nikola. Was she with a kinky-lookin’ chick with fishin’ lures stuck all over her face and tits?”

“Indeed she was.”

“That was Decima—she’s Esher’s lieutenant.”

“Who’s Esher?”

Eddie gave her an odd look. “You really don’t know?”

“I’m new in town,” she explained quietly. “Why don’t you fill me in?”

“Sure—let’s go sit down and I’ll tell you what I know over coffee.”

The back of the apartment was considerably neater than the front half, even though books challenged the major appliances for territory in the small kitchen. Ryan was sitting on an upended plastic milk crate in the corner, a dog-eared comic book draped across his knees and cookie crumbs smeared over his chin.

“Excuse the mess,” Eddie grunted as he moved a pile of old paperbacks from the only other chair in the room. “Normally I don’t let anyone past the threshold—but I’ve learned to listen my instincts.”

“And what do they have to say about me?”

He looked at her for a long moment, as if trying to read a message only he could see. “I think you can be trusted. God knows why. I hope it’s not just an acid flashback.”

“I will take your vote of confidence as a compliment.” She picked up a copy of Fate Magazine, blowing a cloud of dust from its faded cover. “How long have you lived here, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“No, I don’t mind: I’ve been living in Deadtown since the mid-seventies.”

“Has it always been like this?”

Eddie shook his head as he lit the gas range. “It hasn’t always been this rough, but it’s always been a weird scene. I mean, this is ten square blocks of Nowhere in a major city! And I do mean Nowhere! I remember hearing some story that back in the Colonial days this part of town was a safe haven for rebel smugglers, and ever since then it’s been an unofficial “neutral zone” for those outside the law.

“Back during the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers and other tough characters used to hang out here. Toward the end of the last century, it was full of immigrants and lowlifes. Me, I found out about it in ’73. I moved here to dodge the draft. I can’t stand cold winters, so Canada was never an option.”

Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You’ve been hiding out here for over thirty-five years?”

Eddie shrugged as he ladled instant coffee into a pair of chipped mugs. “I’m not really hiding out anymore—leastwise, not from the government. I took advantage of the amnesty years ago. But I got used to living here, and I’d be hard put to get by this cheaply anywhere else in the country! I don’t pay rent. No one does here! It’s a squatter community.”

“Where does the water and power come from?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Rumor has it there’s some kind of deal with the city. Maybe it’s to keep Deadtown from spreading out into the surrounding area.”

“From what you tell me, I’m surprised there aren’t more people living here.”

“Oh, they’re here—you just don’t see ’em, that’s all!” he said with a humorless chuckle. “Those who call this neighborhood home have learned it pays to be invisible. But there’s not as many of us as there used to be, that’s for certain. Deadtown always did have its price for living here—but now it’s higher than ever.”

“You mean the gangs?”

“Gangs, schmangs!” he spat. “I mean the bastards behind them.” “The vampires.”

Eddie grimaced. “You don’t hear that word used much around here. They’ve been around since the beginning, too. That’s one of the reasons this place ain’t full to overflowing with homeless. It’s haunted! I didn’t believe the stories when I first moved here. But one night, around the Bicentennial, I saw one of them take down a wino. I was plenty scared by what I saw—but I was even more frightened of going to jail! I just made it a point to get indoors by sundown after that. Everyone knew they existed back then, but they weren’t blatant about it, not like it is now.”

The battered teakettle began its shrill shriek and Eddie quickly removed it from the heat. He continued to speak as he poured the hot water into the waiting mugs. “For the longest time, there was only one of ’em running things here; bloodsucker by the name of Sinjon. Then, about five years ago, this new vamp moves in. Calls himself Esher. Next thing I know, they’re going at it hammer-and-tongs, bringing in these teenaged psychos as muscle!

“Sinjon’s boys are the Black Spoons—they’re his front men when it comes to drugs in the city. Story has it he controls most of the hardcore smack-and-crack trade on the Eastern Seaboard. Esher’s boys are the Five Points Gang—but they call themselves Pointers. They’re gun runners, mostly. Esher’s big into illegal weaponry. Everything from Saturday Night Specials to heat-seeking missiles. I wouldn’t put it past him to fence a thermonuclear device! Once the sun goes down, all traces of “normalcy” around here disappear and you only set foot outside at your own risk. Not that it’s much safer during the day. But at least while the sun is out, the vampires stay off the streets.”

Sonja nodded her head in the direction of Ryan, who had abandoned his comic book and was curled up on a pile of old blankets under the sink. “What about the boy’s mother?”

Eddie took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. “She used to be an exotic dancer, over at the Wild Pony Club, a few blocks outside Deadtown’s perimeter. She was real good at it, I guess, because one night Esher comes into the club to watch her and the next thing anyone knows she’s the new “star” at his titty bar, the Dance Macabre. Of course, she had no idea what she was getting herself into. But I guess she found out soon enough.”

“And the boy?”

“He only wanted the woman, not her child. He was left behind, without any money or family or friends to help him. I’ll give the kid credit—when he realized his mom wasn’t coming back, he went out looking for her. That’s how I stumbled across him. He was eating out of a garbage can in the alley. I knew if I didn’t do something, he’d either starve to death or end up killed. Poor kid! He spends most of his time watching the house where his mother’s being kept, hoping for a chance to see her.” Eddie shivered, as if trying to shake himself free of an unpleasant memory, and held out the second cup to his guest. “I’m sorry! Where are my manners? Here’s your coffee—how do you like it? Black or white?”

Sonja smiled without showing her teeth and waved aside the proffered mug. “I don’t drink—coffee.” She got up and knelt beside the sink, looking down at the boy’s thin, pale features. She reached down and brushed the fringe of hair on his forehead. Ryan murmured something in his sleep and pulled his blanket tighter. “The undead do not like children—save for food,” she explained. “They are unpleasant reminders to them that they are frozen in time, changeless and unchanging, locked outside the chain of Nature. The boy is lucky Esher did not have him killed the moment he saw him.”

“Yeah,” sighed Eddie, as he poured the extra coffee down the sink. “Real lucky.” He glanced at her suspiciously. “You sure know a lot about vampires, lady. And, come to think of it, why are you wearing sunglasses after dark?”

“I think you already know the answer to that question,” she replied as straightened up, wiping her palms against her jacket.

Eddie felt the pit of his stomach tighten. The hair on the back of his hands and the ridge of his spine began to tingle. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he whispered, taking a step away from the sink. He started backing toward the front room, where he’d left his shotgun propped next to the door. She turned toward him, but did not move to follow. “Shit! I should have known it! Who are you working for—Esher or Sinjon?”

“I serve no one but myself.”

“I don’t believe you, sucker! Either answer me straight or get the fuck out of here! I don’t have to be Van Helsing to figure out you’ll stay dead if I blow your fuckin’ head off!”

She smiled again, this time revealing sharp fangs. “You are brave. You and I both know I could bring you down long before you could reach your weapon, Eddie. Very well. If I prove to you that I am not like the others, will you hear me out?”

He glanced down at where Ryan was still sleeping under the sink, then back at her. “What choice do I have?”

She reached into her jacket pocket and produced the switchblade she’d used earlier on Cavalera, the handle of which was made from ebony and decorated with a golden dragon. Her thumb brushed its ruby eye and the knife leapt from the hilt. In the dim light, the blade resembled a frozen flame.

Eddie’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “I didn’t get a good look at it before—but that’s real silver, isn’t it?”

“For someone who isn’t a Van Helsing, you know your vampires,” she smiled.

“You learn fast if you want to survive in Deadtown,” he replied tersely.

“Then I don’t have to explain what this means,” she said as she drew the blade across her left palm. The cut was deep; dark, almost black blood welled from the wound and dripped between her fingers. Then, as Eddie watched, open-mouthed, the lips of the wound began to seal themselves, leaving a scar that pulsed bright red for a second or two, and then rapidly paled.

“What the hell are you, lady?” he frowned.

She shrugged as she folded the blade back into its hilt. “It’s a long story. My name is Sonja. And I’m here to tell you that there is more than one kind of vampire, my friend. And more than one kind of vampire slayer.”

Chapter Three

Nikola sat in front of the dressing-room vanity, staring at the black paint that covered the mirror while she applied her mascara. Over the last few months, she had grown adept at putting on her makeup without the aid of reflective surfaces. Lord Esher did not approve of looking glasses. Still, she had managed to glimpse enough of herself in shop and car windows to know that she no longer looked like herself; whoever that might have been.

She knew that her name was Nikola, that she was a dancer, and she was betrothed to Lord Esher. Beyond that there was only mist and the occasional, murky recollection. She had the nagging suspicion that her life once held more than these few reference points, but every time she tried to remember anything else, her head began to hurt and the mist surrounding her thoughts grew thicker.

Occasionally the fog would lift for a moment, and she would become painfully aware of what was happening to her. During those brief moments of clarity, she was so overwhelmed by horror and helplessness she actually welcomed the amnesia’s return. It was far less scary that way. Like what had happened outside the club earlier. When the street urchin darted forward and touched her—it was as if she’d been startled from a waking dream. She had looked down into the child’s unwashed face and recognized it. Even now, the boy’s features were trying to swim out of the mist, as if he were drowning and desperate to reach her. The face had a name. And on some deeply hidden level, she realized she should know it.

She put aside her mascara, fearful that her trembling hands would ruin her makeup. Lord Esher was most particular when it came to how she looked while dancing. It would not do to displease him. Nikola blinked her eyes and, to her surprise, found that she was crying.

How strange.

Why should she weep? She was Lord Esher’s newest bride-to-be. Shouldn’t that make her the happiest woman on the face of the earth? She wished she knew.

Just then the door opened and her betrothed, accompanied by his lieutenant, Decima, entered the dressing room. The vampire lord wore tight-fitting black leather jeans, a black muscle shirt, dyed-black lizard skin cowboy boots, and a floor-length black leather duster. His dark, square-cut hair fell well below his wide, heavily muscled shoulders. Despite his striking physical appearance, the only thing that marked him as different from the mortals who inhabited the city’s rowdier districts was the chromium-plated infant’s skull he wore as a belt-buckle.

“Good evening, my dear,” Esher smiled, standing behind Nikola so that his strong hands rested on her bare shoulders, the thumbs pressed lightly against her carotid artery. “You look ravishing, my pretty. Doesn’t she, Decima?”

The female vampire shrugged, folding her arms over her bare breasts. Her nipple rings jingled slightly as she spoke. “As you say, milord.”

“Are you ready for tonight’s performance?” the vampire lord asked.

“Almost,” Nikola replied, feeling her flesh grow chill under Decima’s gaze. Until recently, she had been Esher’s consort, and made no effort to hide her contempt for her replacement in the vampire lord’s affections

“You look troubled, my dear,” Esher murmured as he stroked her pale gray hair. “Is there something bothering you?”

“There was a little boy on the street outside the club tonight,” she said in a soft, uncertain voice. “He seemed familiar to me. Who is he, milord? I feel that I should know him.”

Esher spun turned Nikola about in her chair so fast that she cried out in alarm. His eyes gleamed red and wet, like fresh wounds. When he spoke, there was thunder in his voice. “You did not see a child tonight! Do you understand me, Nikola?”

“There was no child,” she murmured, her pupils now dialed out of focus.

“Very good!” Esher smiled, his anger dissipated as quickly as it had arisen. “That’s much better, isn’t it? Don’t you feel much nicer not thinking about things?”

“Yes, milord,” she agreed meekly. “Very nice.”

The moment Esher left the dancer’s dressing room he turned to scowl at Decima. “Why didn’t you tell me the boy was here earlier?!?” he growled.

Decima shifted uncomfortably and glanced at her boots, unwilling to meet his gaze. “I didn’t think it was important, milord. I sent a couple of Pointers to handle it.”

“Which ones?”

“Cavalera and Cro-Mag.” “And did they succeed?”

“Cro-Mag was found unconscious in the gutter with most of his teeth knocked out. Cavalera is dead. He was stabbed through the heart.”

“Seeing as how one was a congenital idiot and the other an illiterate, I’m not surprised they failed!” Esher snorted in disgust. “Do you have any clue as to who was responsible for the attack?”

“Cro-Mag said something about an old man, but I don’t know how reliable his account might be. He’s seems to be suffering some brain damage…”

“As if anyone would notice the difference!” Esher snorted. “See that he’s made tonight’s Example.”

“As you wish, milord,” Decima said, bowing her head in ritual compliance.

“And I want the brat destroyed, once and for all! I can’t finish pre-conditioning my new bride if he keeps popping up at inopportune times. She’s almost completely mine, save for where the boy’s concerned! As long as he continues to live, he endangers the entire process! I have not spent all this time and energy on Nikola to have it ruined by something as insignificant as a human child! Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” Decima replied with a smile.

In earlier, if not better, days the Dance Macabre had been an establishment frequented by motorcycle gangs and other social misfits. Now it was an exotic ‘gentleman’s club’ that catered to tastes far darker than anything dreamed up by even its most depraved previous clientele.

The interior of the club was divided into three areas: the vast dance-floor area, where pale-faced vampires and humans mingled at tables; the combination runway/stage, where the dancers paraded for the audience; and the upper balcony, which was reserved for Esher and his collection of courtiers and minions. The Dance Macabre offered two different bars: one that served alcohol for humans, and a second for those whose tastes ran to things warmer than wine.

A dozen humans, male and female, were shackled to the far wall by bondage harnesses attached to spools of stainless-steel chain, similar to those used to restrain large dogs. Phlebotomy shunts jutted from their right elbows, while bags of anticoagulant were pumped into intravenous feeds attached to their left arms. Some looked terrified to the point of madness; others seemed oblivious to their surroundings; and a few appeared to be lost in ecstasy. All were exceptionally pallid specimens.

Esher paused at the balcony’s railing to scan the floor below. The evening was getting off to a good start. He spotted a couple of new faces clustered near the feeders. The Dance Macabre attracted vampires from as far away as New York and Atlanta and had proved handy in recruitment. Soon his brood would be as large as Sinjon’s.

Satisfied with the turnout, he returned to his seat, a rosewood throne outfitted with crimson velvet cushions, which had been presented to him by the human mage, Crowley, decades ago. The little charlatan had thought he could learn things from the vampire lord, but had quickly lost interest upon discovering the price of such knowledge. Not that he would have given the power-hungry dilettante what he was looking for in the first place.

Esher snapped his fingers and his private stock stepped forward and knelt at his feet. The woman’s wan complexion and drawn features made her look far older than her nineteen years. Without his having to gesture or speak, the private stock automatically offered her right arm. He quickly uncapped the shunt and plugged a hypodermic needle attached to a length of IV tubing into the access port. He then brought the end of the IV to his lips and began to suck. The private stock’s eyes rolled back and gasped as if on the edge of orgasm and swooned, laying her head atop Esher’s boots. The vampire lord grunted in irritation and kicked her away as he would a bothersome pet. The private stock barely flinched. Judging by the thinness of the blood he’d drawn from her, she was close to empty. He made a mental note to remind Decima to see that another vintage was chosen from his cellar.

Esher settled back into his throne and allowed himself a moment’s relaxation. His eyes flickered to the series of closed-circuit television monitors mounted near the ceiling. One presented him with a closer view of the club floor, another was trained on the stage, and two more showed views of the street just outside the front door. He liked to keep an eye on things. It was a trait that had guaranteed his continuance for a very long time.

At two hundred and five years of age, Esher was comparatively young, as his kind measured such things. Most vampires were well into their third century before they accrued a sizeable power base such as his. But then, he’d always been exceptional, even as a human. The impression he’d made on his unofficial “biographer” was proof of that.

Reynolds Esher had been born into Tidewater aristocracy, thirty years after the Revolutionary War. Indeed, his maternal grandfather had been one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence. Raised by doting mammies, not only had he wanted for nothing as a boy, but few limits had been placed on him. By turns inquisitive and cruel, he’d shown early signs of interest in becoming a physician, so he was promptly packed off to the University of Virginia to continue his schooling. Once enrolled, he began a life of carousing and abandon that would eventually result in his being expunged from the school’s records.

It was during this time that he met the poet. They became acquainted over the gaming tables. Esher found his fellow student intriguing, as they both shared a morbid turn of mind. Although he found the poet’s inability to hold his liquor in turn both amusing and disgusting, they continued to remain on familiar terms after his associate’s gambling debts ultimately forced him to quit his studies.

Esher was clearly the stronger personality, and the sensitive young poet seemed both fascinated and appalled by his comrade’s belief that the world and the wonders in it belonged to whoever was strong enough to take them. In Esher’s view there was no room for the incompetent, the weak, and all those unable—or unwilling—to make the most of their situation. Although the poet argued heatedly with him over these points time and again, it seems he could never quite bring himself to break off their acquaintance. It was as if the strength of Esher’s charisma compelled the poet to seek his company, as a lodestone attracts an iron filing. Outside of their mutual fondness for cards and dice, and a weakness for strong spirits, each man shared an interest in death and dying continued to bind them. But where the poet’s dark obsession took the form of fanciful stories and poems, Esher became a practicing occultist.

As the years passed, the poet drifted in and out of various editorial jobs up and down the Eastern seaboard, publishing the occasional slim volume of florid poetry. As for Esher, he was first expelled from the University of Virginia, and then from Harvard’s medical school. In each case he was accused of harvesting organs from cadavers for unsavory purposes.

After Harvard gave him the book, he decided it would behoove him to take the Grand Tour of Europe so that that he could “broaden his horizons”—as well as dodge a charge of grave-robbing. It was during these travels, in an isolated portion of Romania known as Transylvania, that he found his destiny.

He had heard rumors of a vampire coven operating out of a castle in the Apuseni Mountains. Intrigued by the stories, Esher was compelled to find out more about these secretive blood cultists. At first his inquiries were met with evasion, if not outright hostility. The peasants who tended the fields, and the thick-witted boyars that ruled over them, were equally unwilling to help in his investigations. In some villages the mere mention of the word ‘vampire’ was enough to cause every door to be slammed shut. Still, he was not the type to be dissuaded by superstitious villagers.

It wasn’t until he stumbled across an elderly Eastern Orthodox priest named Father Gregor, who claimed to be an expert on Romania’s dark secrets, that he finally found a tangible lead for his search. The old cleric was blind in one eye and given to drinking at the local inn at Rotberg. Despite his physical infirmities, Father Gregor was a virtual encyclopedia of the occult arts, and more than willing to talk to an appreciative audience.

At first the old priest hedged concerning his knowledge of the vampire coven, but after a couple glasses of sherry he became increasingly voluble. Father Gregor claimed that the coven was lead by a powerful undead warlock named Gabor, who lived in a castle not far from Zlatna. Esher lost little time in reaching the mountain village, but while on the way he wrote to the poet of his adventures and his plan to infiltrate the blood cult. It was a foolish thing to do, he later realized, but at the time he wanted someone to know what might have befallen him should he never be heard from again.

As it turned out, although his earlier inquiries might have gone unanswered, they had gone far from unnoticed. He was in Zlatna less than a day before he was contacted by the vampire known as Gabor. Whatever Esher had expected, it was not the beautiful blond youth with milk-pale skin who appeared in his rented bedchamber that first night. The vampire was impressed by Esher’s strength of personality and ambition, and extended an offer to join his coven.

Unlike most vampires, Gabor spent a great deal of time and care grooming his new recruits before actually turning them into one of the undead. Where others were haphazard when it came to adding to their brood, producing creatures ignorant of their dark heritage, Gabor was intent on surrounding himself with loyal and powerful followers. That is why Gabor insisted that any human he chose to Make in his image first be trained in black magic.

During this time Esher returned to his homeland only once, to set his affairs in order and arrange for his estate and family fortune to be placed in the name of a fictitious distant relative, in preparation for his disappearance from the world of mortal man. His ship put to port in New York City, and it was there he saw the poet again.

They met in a dark and dire pub along the city’s notorious Bowery. Esher wasn’t terribly sure why he’d arranged the meeting, except that part of him wanted to say goodbye to what he now realized was probably the only thing resembling a friend he had ever known. Over absinthe, he found himself rattling on about his drive to bend death to his will and his pursuit of so-called forbidden knowledge. It took him a few minutes before he realized that his drinking companion was regarding him with open ill-ease, if not actual fear. Only then did he recognize his mistake in confiding in the poet. He quickly found a reason to leave, hoping that his old school chum would simply dismiss his story as the raving of a drunk. It wasn’t until some years later that Esher discovered that his last conversation with his old schoolmate had resulted in his writing a couple of stories whose central antagonists bore more than a passing resemblance to him. In one he was portrayed as a wicked and haughty prince who dared defy death; and in the other he was described as the perversely morbid heir of a once-proud lineage. And to, add insult to injury, the poet had barely bothered to fictionalize his surname.

Having put his mortal affairs in order, Esher quickly returned to the castle in Transylvania and willingly surrendered his throat to Gabor’s fangs. When he awoke three nights later, he was shown his own death certificate. And so did his mortal life end and his existence begin.

When Esher’s sire learned of the stories written by the poet, he was displeased by what he saw as a serious indiscretion on his protégé’s part, but Esher was able to convince Gabor that his worries were unfounded. After all, the humans who read the poet’s gruesome little stories routinely dismissed them as fantasy, nothing more. And the poet’s own problems with drink prevented those who might glimpse the truth hinted at in his tales of mystery from taking them seriously. Besides, in another decade or two, who would remember the jottings of a penurious drunkard?

Ten years passed, during which time Esher honed the occult skills he’d learned while still alive, growing even more adept in the dark arts. He curried favor with his sire, and was granted permission to leave Europe in order to prepare the way for Gabor’s eventual relocation to the New World. In 1848 Esher returned to America and claimed the “inheritance” he had arranged for himself, all those years ago. He then drifted up and down the eastern coast, from city to city, marveling at how the Industrial Revolution had transformed sleepy Colonial ports into burgeoning metropolises.

It was during one of these forays he spotted the poet lurching out of a grog shop on the low end of town. He was exceptionally drunk and looked to be in very poor health. Esher followed at a discrete distance as the poet continued on his bender, making sure he kept to the shadows in order not to betray his presence. The other passersby on the street gave the poet plenty of room as he babbled to himself, calling out the name of his wife and quoting fragmented lines of his own poetry in a slurred voice. Esher followed him into an alley and watched from a safe hiding place as the poet leaned against a wall and vomited noisily onto his own shoes. Only then did he step forward and tap his old school chum on the shoulder.

“I say, old fellow, are you all right?”

The poet wiped at his mustache and turned around unsteadily, doing his best to keep from collapsing. “I know that voice-or at least I used to.”

“I’m insulted, old man!” Esher laughed. “Don’t you recognize me?”

The poet’s brows knotted tight, then suddenly went slack, his eyes widening in a mixture of surprise and horror. “My God! They said you died of typhus in Austria!”

“You shouldn’t believe all that you read—and half of what you write, old friend!” Esher chuckled, clapping the ailing man on the back. “Come—allow me to buy you an absinthe! We have so much to catch up on!”

It wasn’t hard to cloud the minds of the patrons of the bar, since their minds were befogged to begin with. Still, Esher did not want anyone to notice that the poet’s last hours were spent in the company of anyone but the green fairy. As he drank, he told Esher of his life—or what was left of it—since last they met. It seemed that although the poet had experienced some success with his writing, there had also been an unfortunate scandal involving a poetess and a libel suit, which eventually robbed him of what little money he’d managed to accumulate, and not long after, his young wife succumbed to tuberculosis. He abandoned New York City, returning to his native soil in hopes of overcoming the temptation of drink. But then a friend invited him to a birthday party in the city, where he made the mistake of toasting the hostess with a sherry—he did not remember much after that, but he was certain that several days had passed.

As Esher listened to the poet weep and babble, he contemplated, for the briefest second, on bestowing the gift of immortality on his old drinking buddy, only to quickly cast aside the notion. The poet was simply too romantic and weak-willed for such a transformation. So when he finally suffered a seizure and collapsed in the gutter, Esher quietly left him there to die of exposure. After all, he had more important things to attend to. And with the poet’s death, the last tie to his mortal identity was finally severed.

In the years since his return to America, Esher’s had worked hard to become one of the most feared and respected Nobles, the Ruling Class of vampire society. But it wasn’t until five years ago, that he’d dared to make his boldest moves: the usurping of Deadtown.

The inner-city neighborhood had been damned for a very long time, and as such he could operate openly, without fear of discovery from the human authorities. However, it had been Lord Sinjon’s stalking grounds since the War of 1812. Compared to the elder vampire, Esher was little more than a pimply-faced teenager. Most Nobles would have been intimidated by the fact Sinjon had one of the largest broods in North America. But then again, Esher wasn’t one for being timid. It was his goal to move in and shatter the old fool’s power base and take over his turf. But in order to do so, he had to match his rival’s numbers. That meant creating his own vampires while also recruiting as many orphans and castaways possible. Luckily, he had no shortage of raw material to work with.

Thanks to the rise of modern technology and the downfall of superstition in the years since the First World War, there were probably more vampires wandering about than ever before. The vast majority of them were garden-variety undead, ignorant of their potential, struggling from one feeding to the next, in constant fear of being found out by the humans on whom they preyed. Without a sire or dame to claim them, they meandered, eternal and alone, in search of security. And Esher was more than happy to give it to them.

Throwing caution to the wind, he set out on a blatant campaign against the Lord of Deadtown. He opened the Dance Macabre, which acted as a magnet for orphaned vampires, especially those new to unlife. Most were so pathetically desperate for someone to tell them what to do and explain the intricacies of their new existence to them that they gladly swore allegiance to him by allowing him to taste of their blood in exchange for a sip of his own. From that moment on they belonged to him, both body and mind, as they no longer had a soul to barter.

Esher much preferred recruiting orphaned vampires than to spawning his own brood. He was nowhere near as prolific as most Nobles, some of whom created new undead every time they fed. Like his own sire, Lord Gabor, Esher preferred quality over quantity in his progeny. He’d been forced to destroy the first one he had created after she ran away to be with a human male. He’d ripped her unliving heart from her breast and squeezed the blood from it as punishment, but not before gouging out the eyes of her mortal paramour. He never spoke her name after that and his servants had been instructed never to mention her again on pain of death. In time he had replaced her with Decima, who had served him well for several decades. But all things fade with time, including a vampire lover’s passion, and now his precious Nikola was being prepared to take her place as his bride …

Esher was suddenly drawn from his reverie by the sound of the disco music being switched off. He straightened himself and leaned forward in his seat. The floor show was about to begin.

Chapter Four

The club’s Emcee, a stocky vampire dressed in a black cassock and floppy beret, raised his hands for silence. His voice boomed out over the club’s speakers courtesy of a cordless microphone.

“Welcome and good eveeee-ning, children of the night, and fellow-travelers, to Dance Macabre: Deadtown’s premiere nightspot! We’ve got a fine floor show lined up for you, if I do say so myself! Something for everybody! We’ve got blood sports, beautiful women, gorgeous men, and the one-of-a-kind dance stylings of our very own Nikola to look forward to before cockcrow! I don’t want to hold up the festivities any longer, so let’s get started with tonight’s Example!”

The curtains behind the Emcee opened to reveal two male figures standing center stage: one Caucasian, the other African-American. Both were completely nude except for leather fighting harnesses and heavy manacles around their wrists and ankles that secured them to an eyebolt set in the floor, and special razor-studded gloves.

“Ladieees and Gentlemen! On your left is none other than the six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-thirty-three-pound tower of terror known as P-Dawg! Type AB Negative! Three wins!

“And on your right, weighing in at six foot three, two hundred and twenty pounds, is the challenger and tonight’s Example: Cro-Mag! Blood type O Positive!”

The Pointers in the crowd shifted uneasily upon seeing their fellow gang member on the stage, but said nothing. Their eyes went from Cro-Mag to P-Dawg, whose mouth was twisted into a permanent sneer by a scar that ran from his left cheek to where his ear used to be. His head was shaven clean, along with his eyebrows.

Cro-Mag, while impressive in his own right, was nowhere near as intimidating. A large purple bruise discolored his forehead, and his right pupil appeared to be fixed. He looked dazed and seemed slightly unsteady on his feet. His penis dangled like an albino python between the pillars of his thighs.

P-Dawg lifted his razored fists over his head, his sneer tightening even further. The gleam in his eyes was that of a man pushed beyond the boundaries of sanity. The vampires in the audience clapped and cheered. The Pointers glowered at the scarred fighter but said nothing.

The Emcee gestured to someone offstage, and the sound of a diesel engine abruptly coming to life added to the noise inside the club. A large metal cage was lowered from the rafters. The Emcee removed a key ring from his voluminous sleeves, quickly unlocking the fighters’ manacles and opening the cage door for them. As the two men entered, the diesel motor changed gear and began to lift the cage into the air while swinging it out over the dance floor. P-Dawg stared coldly at Cro-Mag as they gripped the rust-colored bars for balance. Cro-Mag kept shaking his head, trying desperately to clear his vision.

The Emcee smiled, exposing his pearl-white fangs. “Let the dance—begin!”

The taped electronic house-music kicked back in, even louder than before. P-Dawg surged from his corner of the cage, razored fists slicing Cro-Mag’s naked flesh. The odor of adrenaline-heavy blood filled the air. Below them, the club patrons lifted their voices in an ululating howl of raw pleasure.

Cro-Mag landed a punch on P-Dawg’s jaw, neatly slicing off most of his lower lip. The African-American staggered backward, his sneer transformed into a crimson grin. Before Cro-Mag could savor his coup, P-Dawg grabbed his opponent’s scrotum and yanked it like he was ringing for a stop on the bus. Cro-Mag shrieked and instinctively grabbed his wounded groin, allowing P-Dawg the chance to smash a razor-studded fist into his unprotected face, nearly severing the Pointer’s nose. Cro-Mag’s eyes bugged as he strove to keep from strangling on the wash of blood filling his sinuses. The spectators below laughed and jeered as they jostled one another for prime positions beneath the cage, their heads thrown back and mouths open wide. Even some of Cro-Mag’s fellow gang members, caught up in the blood-frenzy, were laughing and clapping.

Cro-Mag was losing and he knew it. P-Dawg tried to sidestep him as he grabbed for his crotch, but there simply wasn’t enough room to maneuver. P-Dawg bellowed like a bull in a gelding stall. The crowd screamed its delight as his penis landed on the dance floor. There was a minor scuffle as some of the vampires fought to retrieve the tidbit.

Maddened by pain, P-Dawg pounded Cro-Mag’s face unmercifully, slicing open the gangbanger’s eyes and gouging huge ruts along his forehead and cheekbones. Blood fell from the dangling cage in a crimson shower, splashing the wildly dancing vampires underneath. Blinded and mortally wounded, Cro-Mag offered P-Dawg his throat in ritual defeat. The killing blow was swift and, compared to what had gone before, relatively painless.

Cro-Mag dropped to the wire-mesh floor of the cage, his life pumping from his severed jugular onto the dancers below. His last thought before he died was that maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t have come to such an end if he’d only learned to read.

Now that the killing lust had fled, P-Dawg began to feel the effects of his emasculation. He collapsed across Cro-Mag’s body, his eyes glazing as he gripped his opponent’s cooling flesh. The shivers caused by oncoming shock made it look as if he were grieving for his fallen foe. The cage was lowered to the stage, where a man wearing a white coat and carrying a doctor’s bag hurried into the cage and squatted next to the crippled fighter.

The vet glanced at the Emcee and shook his head. Either way, this would be P-Dawg’s last fight for the amusement of the patrons of the Dance Macabre. The Emcee stepped forward, waving the chattering crowd into silence.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen-what shall it be for our brave contestant? Is it ‘yea’ or ‘nay’?” There was quiet for a second, then the audience answered as one, their voices joined in a primitive singsong:

“One of us! One of us! One of us!”

The Emcee nodded his understanding and turned to look in the direction of Esher. Sighing, the vampire lord stood and leaned against the balcony’s railing. The revelers gathered on the floor below, vampire and human alike, tilted their faces upward, and began chanting his name.

“Esher! Esher! Esher!”

“So, milord? What will it be?” called out the Emcee.

Esher glanced at the dying champion for a long moment before finally holding up his thumb. A ragged cheer burst from the spectators. The veterinarian pocketed his stethoscope and returned the premixed lethal injection to his little black bag, then
sank his fangs into P-Dawg’s neck, rewarding him with the prize that every champion who enters the cage strives for—immortality.

Esher looked away, already bored.

“I don’t think P-Dawg’s going to appreciate an eternity spent as a eunuch,” Decima smirked.

“What does it matter?” Esher replied with a casual shrug. “He’ll be one of us now.”

“Old habits die hard,” his lieutenant observed. “Old vices die even harder. You know that better than anyone, milord.”

Esher stiffened and turned to glower at her. “Mind your tongue, woman—if you want to keep it in your head!”

Decima lowered her eyes in deference, but offered nothing else in the way of an apology. Esher returned his attention to the stage. While Dance Macabre attracted unaffiliated vampires to his banner, it also served another purpose. In the old country Nobles had utilized bands of social pariahs, such as gypsies, to work as their servants. But ever since Second World War, the Roma had become increasingly scarce and far too conspicuous to suit the modern day vampire lord. Luckily, the disaffected urban youths that wandered the streets of America’s cities proved more than willing to betray their fellow humans in exchange for money and power. Indeed, they often proved so dedicated they willingly handed over their friends and family to serve as feeders. Right now the club was full of such Judas goats, eager to taste forbidden delights.

Esher had discovered over the years that the best way to bind human servitors to him was by indulging their vices. Drugs, alcohol, sex, violence—these were the tools most often used to bend humans to his will. Not even the sight of one of their own being beaten to death was enough to make them doubt the wisdom of their pact.

The curtains parted again, this time to reveal a padded couch outfitted with leather restraining straps and stirrups similar to those found on an examination table. A large raffle drum filled with plastic chits stood to one side of the stage.

“And now, on to the audience-participation part of tonight’s entertainment!” The Emcee announced as he waved in the direction of the wings.

Two Pointers pulled a struggling woman onto the stage. She wore an expensive, if unexceptional business dress, and a pillowcase covered her head. The Emcee stepped forward and yanked the makeshift hood away, revealing the tousled blond hair and terrified face of a woman in her early thirties. She was trying to scream but her cries were blocked by the ball-gag in her mouth.

The woman was dragged to the couch. As her captors tried to force her to sit down, she experienced a burst of panic-born strength and kicked one of them hard enough to make him let go. Catching the other off guard, she wrenched herself free of his grip and made for the stage door.

Suddenly the Emcee was there in front of her, backhanding her hard enough to send her reeling. The woman dropped to the floor, stunned. Her guards unceremoniously grabbed her by the elbows and dragged her back to the couch, then began roughly removing her clothes and gag. The Pointers in the audience began to hoot and stomp their feet in unison.

“Bang-bang! Bang-bang!”

Having finished stripping and restraining their captive, the two gang members moved to the raffle drum. One of the youths turned the crank to the accompaniment of a prerecorded snare drum-roll, halting upon the crash of the cymbals. His companion opened the hatch on the squirrel cage and reached in, removing one of the plastic chits and handing it to the Emcee, who called out:

“Tonight’s lucky winner is—467!”

There was a brief moment of silence as the humans in the audience consulted their ticket stubs, then a hoarse bellow of triumph. A Pointer with a spider web tattooed across his shaved head began pushing his way toward the stage, pumping his fist in the air as his buddies clapped him on the shoulders.

“Git ’er done, Webb!” one of them hooted, punching him in the arm.

Esher had already lost interest by the time Webb clambered onto the stage to claim his door-prize. Watching humans fornicate was as arousing to him as observing a pair of slugs mate. As the woman began to scream, he motioned for Decima to draw near.

“You said Cavalera was stabbed. Have you found the one responsible?”

“Cro-Mag insisted the old man did it, although from his description of what happened, I seriously doubt it.”

“How so?”

“I saw the body. Cavalera’s chest was heavily bruised and there were several broken ribs—as if whoever stabbed him drove the knife in with a mallet. It’s possible he died by human hand, but highly unlikely.”

“You think he was slain by one of Sinjon’s brood? But why? Why would one of them bother to come to the aid of a human child and an old man?”

Decima shrugged as she glanced at the ritual rape being enacted on the stage down below. “Sinjon is your enemy. Whoever slew Cavalera did it because he was a Pointer, not out of any desire to help the child.”

Esher nodded. It made sense. He leaned back, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Cavalera was a pathetic idiot, but his death is an affront to my honor. Besides, the Pointers will not expect me to let such a transgression go unavenged. I want you to kill a Black Spoon in retaliation tomorrow night.”

“Any one in particular?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Esher said as he looked back down at the stage. The lucky winner had finished and was pulling his pants back up. The secretary’s face was bruised and her mouth bleeding, her eyes swollen with tears. “A paper clip is a paper clip. Just pick one.”

Webb winked, leered at his comrades clustered around the stage, and gave the thumb’s-up sign. The crowd roared like a hungry animal and the synchronized clapping and foot-stomping began again.

“Bonk-bonk on the head! Bonk-bonk on the head!”

The Emcee sidled up, holding a tray on which were arrayed various different blunt instruments, everything from a monkey wrench to an aluminum bat. Webb studied the selection for a long moment before going with the traditional lead pipe.

“Bonk-bonk on the head! Bonk-bonk on the head!”

The woman saw what was coming, but did not struggle or plead for mercy. She was surrounded by monsters—human and otherwise—and recognized the futility of her situation. Instead of screaming, she simply turned her head and closed her eyes. After five blows Webb held aloft the bloody length of pipe for his gang’s approval. A ragged cheer went up from the audience. The Pointer jumped off the stage to be greeted by his homeys, who congratulated him on his performance. The clean-up team quickly removed the door-prize and hurried it backstage, where anything that might possibly identify the corpse was removed before it was weighted down and dumped in the river.

The lights dimmed and the canned throb of the house music abruptly disengaged. Esher leaned forward in his seat, clutching at the armrests, his full attention riveted on the darkened stage below. The vampires and humans still milling on the dance floor fell silent, their conversations forgotten, as the speakers crackled to life, this time playing the opening notes of Philip Glass’ Mishima.

A powder-blue spot blossomed on the stage, spilling its light onto the solitary figure of a woman dressed in a classical-length white tutu curled upon the boards. Underneath it she wore a white satin leotard and tights which showcased her dancer’s build. Her feet were laced into blood-red ballet shoes, the ribbons elaborately knotted just below her knees. Her smoke-gray hair was pulled into a soft bun that hung against the nape of her neck like a silken cloud. Her already pale skin was made even more so by a layer of clown-white greasepaint and a generous dusting of talc that covered her face.

As the music swelled, Nikola languidly raised her head, looking out into the audience. Her eyes were heavily outlined in mascara, like those of an ancient Egyptian princess, and her lips were painted a brilliant scarlet. Her gaze swept across the upturned faces—some vampire, some human—all of them hungry. The doubt and confusion that had filled her head earlier had disappeared: It was time to dance.

Esher’s eyes narrowed, his features set in extreme concentration, as he watched his bride-to-be rise and go en pointe as if pulled upright by invisible strings. Her grace was what had drawn him to her in the first place, and it never ceased to awe him.

Moving with the tranquil ease of a jungle cat, Nikola displayed to her audience the shunts embedded in her arms. As she swayed to the music, she slowly opened the valves. Several of the vampires gasped in excitement as the smell of her blood filled the air. As the rhythms intensified, so did her movements, as her glissades gave way to pirouettes, arabesques, and grand jetes that carried her across the stage like a young gazelle, her blood flying in crimson arcs onto the stage and splashing into the crowd.

While the Pointers in the audience grimaced in disgust, the vampires gathered at the edge of the stage, their wine-dark eyes gleaming in anticipation. For creatures decades, if not centuries, removed from human sexuality, this was the ultimate in erotic dance. Those lucky enough to be spattered with her blood moaned and swooned in ecstasy as they licked the precious fluid from their fingers.

Nikola spun across the stage like a dervish as the music neared its climax. As she came out of her final pirouette, she stumbled and nearly lost her footing. Her pristine tutu and tights were stained so bright a red it was impossible to see where the blood ended and her shoes began. She collapsed onto the stage, her bosom heaving as she gasped for air. The smell of fresh blood was overpowering, and Esher felt himself grow excited. So did other members of the audience, one of which—a vampire dressed in a plaid shirt and backward baseball cap—jumped onto the runway, eager to slake his bloodlust. There was a collective gasp from the audience as the unruly vampire moved toward Nikola, who remained slumped, semi-conscious, on the runway.

With a simple bound, Esher launched himself from the balcony, sailing over the upturned faces of the crowd below. He landed, boots first, in the middle of the other vampire’s back, snapping his spine like a stalk of celery. The lust-mad vampire crumpled like a paper doll, no longer able to move. As Esher scooped Nikola into his arms, he delivered a dismissive kick to the now-paralyzed vampire at his feet.

“Toss this fool into an alley,” the vampire lord snarled, “where he can slowly starve to death, feeding only whatever is stupid enough to come within his reach. Let that be a warning to all of you: the woman is mine!”

“Yes, milord!” Decima replied. She curtly motioned to a couple of nearby Pointers, who dragged the crippled vampire out of the club by his now-useless legs.

Satisfied that his will had been done, Esher left the stage, Nikola’s blood-stained body cradled against his chest, her face as still and perfect as a porcelain doll.

Chapter Five

Father Eamon looked up from his prayers upon hearing the screams. He narrowed his eyes as he tried to gauge their distance and direction. Sound had a tendency to echo inside St. Everild, and even after all these years he had yet to develop the ability to pinpoint the exact location of the noises that filtered in from the street. Light cast from the flickering votive candles made the shadows surrounding the plaster saints pulse and shudder. His knees groaned as he rose from the prayer rail, his rosary swinging from his fingers like a carpenter’s plumb. Hardly a midnight went by without Mass being disrupted by screams or gunfire from outside. Then again, since he kept the doors to the sanctuary barricaded, what difference did it make where the screams were coming from? The archdiocese certainly didn’t care, seeing how it had desanctified St. Everild some time ago. Actually, ‘expunged’ was closer to the truth. St. Everild and its surrounding parish had been erased from all official church records. And yet, it continued to exist as a ghostly rumor amongst the seminaries as a sort of ecclesiastical urban legend. Father Eamon had first heard tell of the so-called “church of the damned”, whispered in the tone of voice normally reserved for campfire ghost stories, while attending the seminary. Little did he know at the time that one day he would actively seek it out and claim the parish as his own.

The priest grimaced as the rheumatism sent off a sharp jolt of pain in his right knee. Sleeping on a pile of rags in an unheated room with a leaky roof was hardly the best thing for his condition, but he had no desire to live elsewhere. As he hobbled down the aisle, he glanced at the line of heavy wooden pews knocked over like so many dominoes and made a mental note to right them and see that the hymnals scattered across the floor were properly dusted and put back in place. Just because St. Everild had been forsaken by the Church did not mean it had been forgotten by God.

As he reached the stairs leading to the bell tower, the screaming grew more intense. It sounded like it was coming from the direction of the Black Lodge. He hesitated for a moment, then resumed mounting the rickety wooden steps. He wound his way up the narrow, dusty confines of the tower staircase, even though he knew he was helpless to change the outcome of whatever was transpiring on the street below. This was his penance: to bear helpless witness to horror upon horror, night after night. For once, long ago, he had been tricked by Satan into believing he was doing the Lord’s Will by smiting an evil doer. But by succumbing to the sins of pride and wrath, now he was only fit to tend St. Everild’s forgotten altar, and nothing more.

He pushed open the belfry trapdoor with a mighty grunt, to be greeted by a rush of cold, damp air mixed with the smell of nesting birds. His occasional trips to the tower were the closest he’d come to venturing out-of-doors after dusk over the last decade. The tower had four large, narrow windows that faced the compass points, allowing him unobstructed views of Deadtown. From this vantage point he followed the comings and goings of his “parish.” The bells that had once graced the belfry were long gone, but judging from the rotten coils of rope and the size of a solitary clapper left behind, they must have been impressive.

To the east was the river, gleaming dark as sacramental wine in the light reflected from the city. To the north was Pointer territory. To the south was The Street With No Name, the neighborhood’s unofficial neutral zone, where its few remaining businesses were clustered. And to the west, directly across the street from St. Everild, was the Black Lodge.

He wasn’t certain which had been built first, as both dated back to Colonial times, and both were quite old. Perhaps the Holy See had elected to build St. Everild in defiance of the Freemasons’ antipapal bigotry, or maybe the Freemasons had erected their lodge as an affront to the Pope. There was only one person in all of Deadtown who knew for sure. And Father Eamon had no intention of ever speaking a single word to Lord Sinjon.

The priest looked down into street and glimpsed the silvery grin of a death’s head on the back of a jacket, as its owner held a gun to a quaking woman’s head. No doubt she was some hapless tourist who had wandered into the area by mistake, as no citizens of Deadtown would be so foolish as to leave the comparative safety of their homes after sundown.

The priest’s attention was suddenly drawn to a flicker of movement in the opposite alleyway. There was a sound like that of a book being snapped shut and the Black Spoon gang member stiffened and stretched, as if trying to get a crick out of his back. He suddenly dropped his gun, his victim forgotten, and tried to reach the crossbow bolt jutting from of his spine, before collapsing in the gutter. The woman stared down at her erstwhile attacker, blinking in shock. Before she could heave a sigh of relief there was another snap and a second bolt found its way into her throat, pinning her like a butterfly to the brick wall behind her. The unseen killer’s mocking laughter rose on the night air, making Father Eamon shiver like a wet dog. The priest crossed himself and quickly recited the prayer for the dead. He then hurried down the tower stairs to the relative warmth of the sanctuary. He did not want to think about what he’d just seen, but he knew that of Sinjon’s men being killed on the very door step of the Black Lodge was Not Good.

The pain in his leg was now so intense it made his vision blur. He reached behind the pulpit, retrieving a quart of bottom-shelf whiskey. He cursed his weakness as he knocked back a stiff slug. The liquor burned almost as badly as his shame. The first swig of the night was always the guiltiest. After that, they began to blur and soften, as did his memories and the sorrow that accompanied them. He eased himself into the one pew he’d managed to upright in the twelve years since he’d made St. Everild his home, angling his bum leg so it was supported by the hard wooden bench. As the cheap whiskey dulled his senses, he decided that he was definitely going to get around to righting the rest of the pews.

Tomorrow.

Chapter Six

Ryan was trying very hard to be quiet because Eddie said not to disturb the strange lady while she was asleep. Except she wasn’t sleeping. She was dead. Not dead like the rat he found in the alley, but not exactly alive either. Ryan knew she was a vampire because Eddie had told him so when he woke up. Eddie also told him that there was nothing to be scared of: that Sonja wasn’t like Esher or any of the other vampires in Deadtown. Ryan didn’t know exactly what to make of this, but if Eddie said it, then it must be true. As far as he was concerned, Eddie was the smartest person in the world. He wondered if his real dad was anything like Eddie. Probably not, or else his mom would have let him stick around. As much as Ryan liked Eddie, it was nothing compared to how much he loved his mom. Every night before he fell asleep he would think about how it used to be before the monsters came and took her away. For as long as he could remember they always moved around a lot, living in furnished one-room apartments. Since his mom slept all day and worked all night, Ryan spent a lot of time with babysitters. Sometimes, if she couldn’t get someone to watch him, she’d lock him in the apartment by himself with the TV turned on and couple of PB&J sandwiches. So he learned how to take care of himself pretty early. By the time he was four he already knew how to call 911 and microwave a burrito all by himself. Most of the time he sat up watching TV until his mother came home, because that was the only time he had her to himself. Usually she would bring home fast-food and read him a story, like Curious George Rides A Bike or Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, and then they’d go to bed. Until the monsters came, Ryan had never slept away from his mom. Their life was hand-to-mouth, spent one day ahead of the eviction notices, but it was all he had known. Ryan often had nightmares about the night the monsters came. It was just before dawn and he and his mom had just gone to bed. Normally they slept from five in the morning until two or three in the afternoon. Suddenly there was a horrible crash and the front door of their apartment flew open and a bunch of strange guys and a scary-looking woman came in. Ryan’s mom screamed at him to run and hide, but he was too scared and didn’t want to leave her, so he grabbed her hand, instead, and held on tight.

The scary-looking woman pointed at Ryan’s mom, and the guys dragged her off the bed. Since he was still holding his mother’s hand, he got dragged along too. When the scary woman with the metal sticking out of her face saw him, she cussed and grabbed him by his hair, looking at him like he was a bug or something. He screamed, more out of fear than pain, and his mom broke free from the guys long enough to punch the mean lady. The mean lady laughed and let go of him, then slapped his mom hard enough to knock her out. Ryan was so frightened he ran and hid under the couch, which is what he always did when the shows on TV got too scary for him. No one seemed to notice. The guys grabbed his mom and carried her out of the apartment. Just as the mean lady was about to close the door behind her, she dropped down onto all fours and looked under the sofa and grinned right at him. That’s when he saw her sharp, pointy teeth and red eyes and realized his mom had been captured by monsters. Unlike the shows he saw on TV, no policemen ever showed up. After a day or so he realized that his mom wasn’t coming back. So Ryan packed what few things he owned—mostly action figures—and went in search of her. It wasn’t long before his quest brought him to Deadtown. He spent most of the first week avoiding the gang kids, scrounging food out of garbage cans, and looking for a safe place to hide. Being little, he was able to crawl into spaces most people would never think to look in.

Unlike most of Deadtown’s residents, Ryan actually ventured out at night. He had no choice. It was the only way he could hope to catch a glimpse of his mom. He’d actually gotten pretty good at sneaking behind Pointer lines—it was kind of like playing hide-and-seek, except that it wasn’t a game anymore. Ryan had been on the street two weeks by the time he met Eddie. There were a couple of people living in Deadtown who knew about him, and left scraps of food and old clothes on their doorsteps. He would wait until no one was around before darting from his cover and collecting the offerings. Then one day, as he was hungrily wolfing down a half-eaten sandwich left on an alley stoop, the door suddenly opened and a pair of masculine hands grabbed him and yanked him inside. Ryan’s first instinct was to kick and scream, biting at the hands until they let him go. He scampered across the room and tried to make himself as small as possible, wedging himself under the sink. He glowered at the white-bearded man in the tie-dyed shirt standing between him and the door. The bearded man didn’t look very dangerous, but then Ryan had learned through painful experience that appearances in Deadtown were often deceiving.

“Damn it, kid! I’m just trying to help you! There’s no call for you trying to take my fingers off at the knuckle!” the older man snapped, sucking the blood from his wound. The anger quickly drained from his face as he got a good look at Ryan. “Jesus, kid! I’ve seen fatter alley cats than you! Look, I’m sorry if I scared you—I just didn’t want you to run off. I’ve been seeing you on the street for a few days now, and it’s botherin’ me that a li’l dude like you is on his ownsome. Where’s your mama, kiddo?”

“The monsters took her,” Ryan replied simply. The older man made a face. “Your mama is Lord Esher’s new squeeze?” “What’s a squeeze?” Ryan frowned.

“Never mind,” he replied.

Ryan decided he liked the bearded man because he looked like Tim the Bouncer. Tim the Bouncer worked at one of the clubs where his mom used to dance, and had a beard, but it wasn’t white, and he wore a leather jacket and rode a motorcycle. His mom said Tim the Bouncer was an angel, although Ryan had never seen any wings or a halo on him. Maybe this man was an angel, too.

No longer afraid, Ryan finally looked around at his surroundings for the first time and saw that the whole room was full of books. He slowly crept out from under the table, his head swiveling in every direction.

“Do all these belong to your, mister?” “Every last one. Do you like books, kid?”

Ryan nodded vigorously. His eyes widened as he spotted a familiar dust jacket amidst the jumble. He quickly snatched up the copy of Make Way For Ducklings, holding it as if it were an ancient treasure. The gleam in his eyes was that of someone who seeing an old friend they thought long dead. “I used to have this book!” he exclaimed excitedly. “My mommy would read it to me before I went to bed!”

“Would you like to have that book, kid?” the man asked gently. “Yes—but I can’t read yet,” he admitted sheepishly.

The man smiled and motioned for Ryan to bring him the book. “That’s okay. I’ll read it to you.”

Ryan looked at the old man, then down at the book, then back again. “My name’s Ryan.”

“Hi, Ryan. My friends call me Eddie.”

Ryan smiled. It was the first time he’d done so in a long while. It felt good. “Hi, Eddie.”

From that moment on the two became fast friends. Ryan loved and trusted Eddie more than anyone in the world except his mom. And if Eddie said the strange lady with the sunglasses was okay—then she was okay. Even if she was a monster.

Ryan put aside the picture book he’d been pretending to look at and walked over to stare down at Sonja. Eddie had pushed aside some of his books to make room for her, and she was lying on the floor atop a blanket. She was still wearing her street clothes—she hadn’t even removed her boots or jacket. Her arms were folded across her chest, hands resting atop her jacket. She didn’t seem to be breathing. He couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or shut because she was still wearing her sunglasses. He leaned in closer and stared down at his twinned reflection in the mirrored lenses. He had gained some weight since moving in with Eddie, but he still looked thin. He crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue, giggling as his mirror image did the same.

“Good morning to you, too.”

Ryan yelped and scuttled backward as Sonja unfolded her arms and sat upright. She swiveled her head toward him, her gaze still shielded by the sunglasses.

“I wasn’t making fun of you! Honest!” he said nervously.

“You needn’t be afraid of me, Ryan,” she said as she stood up and stretched, her leather jacket creaking as she moved. “Where’s Eddie?”

“Out doin’ stuff. He’ll be back soon. It’ll be dark in an hour.” He paused for a moment, eyeing her speculatively. “Are you really a monster?”

Sonja nodded as she patted down her pockets, not seeming to take offense at the question. “You could say that.”

“What kind of monster?”

She flashed a grin at the boy, revealing pearly white fangs. “The kind that eats monsters.”

Chapter Seven

“I want you to show me which ones are normally posted as guards.”

Ryan pointed at a youth with a shaved head was covered by a spiderweb tattoo. “He’s one.” He then motioned to an older thick-set African-American with tangled, graying dreadlocks and a wicked-looking machete hanging from his belt. “He’s usually there, too. I think they’re friends.”

Ryan and Sonja were watching the house where Esher kept Nikola when she wasn’t dancing at the club or keeping him company. Although they were less than thirty feet away, the Pointers hanging about the front stoop did not see them because they were hiding in the storm drain across the street from the brownstone, with Ryan standing atop a plastic milk crate so he could see past the drain’s concrete lip.

“Do you watch from here every night?” Sonja asked.

“Uh-huh. Unless it’s rainin’. That’s how come I can get away from the Pointers so easy—I slip down the old drains and hide from them.”

“Aren’t you scared of the rats down here?”

“At first, yeah—they’d hiss at me and stuff, but if I carry a stick or throw stuff at them, they run away and leave me alone. Eddie says they’re more scared of me than I am of them, anyway.”

“You’re a brave kid, Ryan. Braver than most men.” Sonja smiled and placed her hand on his head, only to have the boy go completely rigid. At first she thought it was because she’d touched him; then she saw the door to the house across the street swing open.

The female vampire from the night before—the one with the crossbow—stepped out and motioned to the African-American with the machete. The Pointers gathered on the stoop snapped to attention. One of them produced a cell phone, and a second later the black ’57 Cadillac pulled up to the curb.

“That’s Decima,” Ryan whispered, pointing to the vampire. “I hate her. She’s really mean.” There was a vehemence to the boy’s voice that was far older than his years.

Decima turned to the front door of the brownstone and waved her crossbow. Nikola stepped over the threshold, blinking in confusion. She was dressed in a white velvet sheath that clung to her like a second skin and exposed a great deal of thigh and cleavage. One of the Pointers at the foot of the stoop broke into an unabashed leer. The African-American with the machete saw the look on his face and came barreling down the steps.

The Pointer’s lustful stare disappeared, to be replaced by a look of genuine fear. He took a couple of steps backward, raising his hands as if to shield himself. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Obeah! I swear to God I didn’t—!”

“There’s no point in swearin’ to your god, fool!” Obeah thundered. “This is Deadtown—only devils hear your prayers here!” With that he brought the machete down with one powerful stroke. The Pointer screamed as blood geysered from the stump that had, seconds before, been his right hand. His companions swore and jumped back, but did not offer to come to his aid as he collapsed onto the sidewalk, clutching his spurting wrist. “You dissed Lord Esher by looking at his woman in such a way!” Obeah barked. “Such insolence is not tolerated!” The machete struck again, as quick as lightning. The Pointer cried out as the blade sliced his nose off as cleanly as a surgeon’s scalpel.

Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “So Esher has a Tonton Macoute guarding his bride-to-be.” She glanced down at the boy by her side. Ryan was watching the Haitian take apart the hapless Pointer, his face as unreadable as a plank. When she looked back, it was to see the fallen gang member lying on the sidewalk in a widening pool of blood, with Obeah carefully cleaning his machete blade with a handkerchief.

Decima grabbed Nikola by her upper arm and hurried her down the stairs to the waiting car. Obeah climbed in after them, while the man with the spiderweb tattoo got into the front passenger seat.

The moment the car doors slammed, Ryan hopped down off the milk crate and gathered it in his arms. “C’mon-we’ve got to follow her!” He wiggled down the concrete throat of the drain, pushing the plastic crate ahead of him. A minute or so later they came to an open mouth that fed into the main sewer. Ryan lowered the crate onto the narrow walk that flanked either side of the sluiceway and then clambered down.

“How can you follow them when you can’t see where the car’s going?” Sonja asked.

“It’s Thursday!” Ryan explained as he hurried along the catwalk. “She always goes to his place on Thursdays, just like she always goes to the club on Wednesdays and Saturdays!”

“Whose place?”

“Duh! Esher’s, of course!” the boy replied, rolling his eyes.

The House of Esher dated back to the time when people built in a grand manner, and was surrounded by piles of rubble and yawning, symmetrical holes that had once been basements. This wasteland was not a result of random decay or planned urban renewal. Instead, Esher had personally ordered the demolition of every other building on the block. This was because he liked to see company coming long before it arrived.

There were sentry posts at either end of the street, manned by gang members armed with Uzis and repeating shotguns, who controlled who came in and out of the area. Campfires flickered and reefer smoke rose like ground mist from the outlying exposed cellars, which served as makeshift barracks for the Pointers. The gaping holes closer to the mansion, however, served a far more sinister purposes, as they were the entry and exit points to the tunnels that honeycombed the neighborhood, and were used exclusively by the vampire lord’s brood.

The street outside the House of Esher was crowded with Pointers sporting their colors, milling about aimlessly. Some lounged on the wide stairs that lead to the front door, while others perched on makeshift stools fashioned from cast-off crates. The oldest member of the gang looked to be twenty-five, while the youngest was no more than thirteen. While there were no women to be seen amongst their number, there were plenty of firearms, with each member of the gang proudly displaying a weapon tucked in their waistband.

“Interesting,” Sonja muttered. She was perched atop a six-story tenement building two blocks away, watching the gang members with a pair of binoculars. “This Esher has built himself quite the army of sociopaths.”

“How can you see that far with those sunglasses on?” Ryan asked. “I can’t see anything from here!”

“My eyes aren’t like yours. I can see things better at night than most people can at high noon.”

“Neat! Like a kitty, right?”

“Kind of.”

“I used to have a kitty named Koko, but the landlord found out and made us get rid of him. He said Koko had fleas. He was really mean and I hated him. The landlord, that is—not Koko.”

Sonja placed a hand on Ryan’s shoulder; the boy’s collarbone felt like the strut of a balsa wood kite. “I need you to do as I say, understand? I’m going to get inside Esher’s stronghold and try to find out how I can help your mom. But from what I’ve seen, I’m not going to be able to sneak in.”

“So how are you gonna do it?”

“If he thinks I’m his friend, then maybe I can trick him,” she explained. “But I can’t let Esher or anyone who works for him find out that we know each other. I want you to get back to Eddie’s as fast as you can without being noticed and stay there, okay? And when you see me on the street again, pretend you don’t know me, you understand? Everything depends on it.”

Ryan nodded, his features taking on a solemnity made even more poignant by his extreme youth. “I understand. You’re going undercover, like the cops on TV.”

“You’ve got it, Sonja smiled, ruffling his hair. “Now get on back to Eddie’s. It’s not safe out here.”
The boy headed for the doorway that lead down from the rooftop, then turned to look at her. “Do you have kids, lady?”

Sonja nodded sadly. “A long time ago I had a little girl.” “What happened to her?”

She paused for a long second, looking across the rooftops to the stars dimly twinkling through the pall of pollution and light reflected from the city. “She grew up and didn’t need me anymore.”

“I need you, lady,” Ryan said quietly. “My mom does too.” With that the ragged five-year-old closed the door to the roof behind him.

Sonja took a deep breath and let it out slowly while massaging her forehead. She hadn’t come to Deadtown to save anyone. But here she was, making promises to reunite a kindergarten student with his strung-out mom. She was really setting herself up this time. Once she was certain the boy was safely gone, she fixed the snaps on her leather jacket, gave her steel-toed boots a quick buff against the backs of her pants legs, and strode down the otherwise-deserted street in the direction of Esher’s stronghold.

Save for the flicker of a television screen, or the occasional flash of a wan, frightened face peering out from the windows of the tenement buildings she passed, Deadtown seemed as moribund as its name implied. Suddenly three figures moved to block her way. Their movements were fast and fluid, like those of stalking panthers. She halted instantly, but did not move to flee.

“I told you we’d find her if we bided our time,” one of the vampires said with a voice as dry as corn husks.

“What are you talking about?” snarled the second. “I’m the one who suggested staking out the neighborhood!”

“Shut up!” snapped the third. “There’s plenty of time for arguing over who gets the credit for capturing her after we deliver her head to Lord Sinjon!”

“My-my-my!” she said with a derisive laugh. “What have we here—the Three Billy Goats Gruff?”

The first vampire made a disgusted noise and drew himself up to his full height. “Your days of insulting our master are over, Decima!”

Sonja chuckled and shook her head. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else, fellas.”

“Don’t try to confuse us, bitch!” growled the second vampire. “We know you’re the one responsible for slaying Lord Sinjon’s guard on the steps of the Black Lodge! You left your calling card jutting out of his back! Did you think our master would allow such an insult to go unpunished? He wants your head for his mantelpiece, Decima. And we’ve come to collect it!”

Sonja’s half-smile quickly turned into a frown. These pinheads were starting to annoy her. “Can’t you get it through your thick heads? I’m not this ‘Decima’ person you’re looking for! Now, I’m only going to ask you nicely once more to clear out of my way—”

Suddenly the third vampire hissed like an angry cat, and the trio set upon her all at once. The first circled behind her, while the second and third came in high and low. Sonja caught the third vampire squarely in the jaw with a kick from her steel-tipped boots, busting it so that it dropped open onto his chest, revealing his pink, flapping tongue. The second vampire ended up skewering himself onto her open switchblade, puncturing his right lung like a toy balloon. He shrieked like a stallion in a gelding stall, pulling himself off the silver knife-blade with a convulsive jerk. He tore open his shirt to expose a pallid, hairless chest. The flesh surrounding the puncture wound was already swelling and turning black, becoming instantly gangrenous.

“What manner of sorcery is this?” rasped the first vampire, freezing in horror upon seeing his companion collapse onto the cobblestoned street in anaphylactic shock from the silver in his undead bloodstream.

Sonja answered by spinning about and plunging the switchblade into the first vampire’s right eye. He shrieked in agony, and a second later his left eye ballooned outward, like that of some absurd cartoon character, before bursting.

Seeing what had befallen his comrades, the vampire with the broken jaw turned to flee, only to find his escape blocked by his erstwhile prey. He lifted his hands in supplication and sputtered something that might have been a plea for mercy just before she drove her switchblade into his abdomen. He instantly dropped to the ground, where he lay writhing at her feet like a worm stranded on a hot sidewalk. She closed her switchblade and returned it to its hiding place and resumed traveling in the direction of the House of Esher.

She had barely taken three steps before hearing the sound of automatic weapons being chambered. A woman’s voice suddenly barked from the darkness: “Halt!”

Several Pointers armed with AK47s emerged from the surrounding shadows. Accompanying them was the female vampire Sonja had seen escorting Nikola into the club. She was dressed in a black leather jacket and matching leather jeans and carried a loaded crossbow.

Decima scanned the carnage and then frowned at Sonja. “What’s going on here?” “Nothing. Anymore.”

“Don’t get cute with me!” Decima snapped. She nodded to one of the Pointers, who
rolled over one the dead vampires with a ginger nudge from his boot, since all three bodies were already swelling from advanced putrefaction.

“They’re from Sinjon’s brood, milady!” he reported.

Decima’s frown deepened and she turned her gaze back to Sonja. “Why did you kill them?”

“I didn’t have any choice,” she replied. “They attacked me. They kept talking about bringing my head back to their sire.”

A look of bafflement crossed Decima’s face. “Why would Lord Sinjon want your head?”

Sonja pointed to the crossbow Decima was carrying. “It was all a case of mistaken identity. They thought I was you.”

Decima’s spine straightened in indignation. “That’s absurd!”

“Yeah—I wasn’t very flattered, either.”

Esher’s lieutenant raised her hand to slap the other woman for her impudence, only to find the stranger’s hand clamped firmly about her wrist. She tried to tug it free, only to have the fingers tighten their grip.

“That’s no way to treat somebody who’s just done you a big favor,” Sonja said frostily as she let go of her arm. “As I see it, those are three fewer enemies you have to worry about later on.”

“What do you want?” Decima spat as she massaged her wrist.

Sonja smiled, revealing gleaming fangs below the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses. “I heard you were hiring.”

Chapter Eight

“Who goes there?” The perimeter guard barked, bringing his riot gun to bear on the figures that emerged from the shadows beyond his checkpoint. The guard tensed for a moment, then relaxed as he recognized Esher’s field lieutenant. “Oh, it’s you, milady.”

Decima did not bother to respond, brushing past the sentry as if he did not exist, Sonja following in her wake. The guard stared at Sonja until she turned her mirrored eyes in his direction, and then he quickly looked away, returning his attention to the darkness beyond his post. When it came to humans, the Pointers were as aggressive and vicious as a wolf pack, but the undead was another matter entirely.

The House of Esher loomed over the blasted landscape like a mammoth tomb. Sonja focused her attention on the building, dropping her vision into the Pretender spectrum in order to read its occult energy fields. She had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing out loud. The aura surrounding the stronghold pulsed and vibrated with considerable power.

There was definitely magic at work here.

She had heard rumors that Esher was a warlock as well as a vampire. She had dealt with powerful Nobles before, but their strength had lain in the disciplines of the mind, not sorcery. Granted, she had knowledge of magic through her business arrangements with such alchemists-for-hire and spell-slingers as the kitsune Li-Lijing and the petit daemon Malfeis, but that was about the extent of her knowledge. It was clear from the braided chains of etheric energy surrounding Esher’s stronghold that this was going to be tricky. Very tricky, indeed.

The Pointers lounging on the stairs leading to the front door abruptly snapped to attention upon catching sight of Decima. The heavily-pierced vampire did not bother to look in their direction as she glided up the steps. She paused on the front threshold, her hand resting on an ornate brass doorknob fashioned to resemble the head of a roaring lion.

“This is the House of Esher, the heart of his domain. It is his power made manifest. I will warn you but once, stranger—do not stray from the central corridor.”

Having issued her caution, Decima pushed the door open and motioned for Sonja to enter. The moment she crossed the threshold the floor of the building abruptly fell away like the bottom of a carnival ride Gravity Barrel, and its interior began to spin in a dizzying circle. She saw numerous doors speeding past at a fearsome pace; some of the doors were above her head, while others were under her feet, while others still simply hung suspended in empty space. Some of the doors bore numbers, others were marked with signs, while some were even shaped like birds or lizards.

“Do not move,” Decima instructed, her voice seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere. “Do not try to open any of the doors you see before you. Only the corridor is safe. The corridor leads to Esher, no matter where he may be. Close your eyes. Do you see it?”

Sonja did as she was told. The dizzying carousel of doors disappeared, to be replaced by the image of a perfectly ordinary hallway, decorated with tasteful wallpaper and gilt-framed portraits. As she focused her attention on the corridor, Decima appeared before her, motioning impatiently.

“Hurry up! I haven’t got all night to waste on you!” she snapped. Sonja stepped forward, her eyes still tightly shut. She followed Decima, keeping to the corridor as it snaked its way through the house. At times the hallway seemed to turn in on itself and she found herself walking back the way she came. She battled a surge of vertigo as the corridor twisted into itself, turning the floor and ceiling into a Moebius strip. Still, she had to admire the skill and knowledge necessary to create such an impressive magical construct. It took a great deal of power and effort to bend space so deftly. Esher’s stronghold made the spirit-house called Ghost Trap she’d once visited look like a shoebox diorama.

At last Decima stopped before a huge oaken door on which was carved another lion’s head. She paused to glare over her shoulder at Sonja. “This is the audience chamber. Lord Esher awaits within. Tell me your name and who sired you, so I can properly announce you.”

Sonja shook her head. “No way. If he wants to know what’s my name and who’s my daddy, he’ll have to ask me himself.”

Decima’s jaw twitched. “You think you’re something special, don’t you?”

“Just open the fuckin’ door.”

Decima’s eyes flashed crimson, but she pushed open the door all the same. The audience chamber was hung with black velvet drapes and blood-red tapestries embroidered in gold thread with occult symbols and sigils. The room was lit by several cathedral-style candelabra, each as tall as a man, with curving arms that held over a hundred candles apiece. Esher was seated in a fifteenth-century Savonarola chair carved from walnut, behind which hung an exact replica of Notre Dame’s famed Rose Window, suspended by steel cables and lit from behind by artificial light. Curled about the vampire lord’s feet like a dozing cat was Nikola, her eyes half-lidded as he caressed her pale gray hair.

Esher learned forward to speak to the two Pointers Sonja had seen earlier: the skinhead with the spiderweb tattoo and the Haitian called Obeah. “I don’t care which one you pick—although I would prefer it to be one of the lesser lights, if you understand me; don’t waste anyone who might prove useful later on,” he said in a quietly authoritative voice. Upon Decima’s approach, he motioned for the Pointers to leave. “Do as you must.”

Sonja eyed the duo as they passed by her. The one with the tattoo, unlike the perimeter guard, openly returned her stare and sneered as he exited the audience chamber.

Esher leaned back in his seat, his hand resting atop Nikola’s silken head as if she were a faithful hound. “Have you anything to report, lieutenant?”

“Three of Sinjon’s brood were destroyed tonight. They were looking to retaliate for the Black Spoon I took down.”

“Good job, Decima,” Esher smiled.

“What are you thanking her for?” Sonja interjected. “She didn’t snuff ’em—I did!”

Esher straightened, his gaze focusing on the stranger standing before him. “Is this true, Decima?”

“Yes, sire, it is,” his lieutenant replied grudgingly.

“Then why did you not announce her?”

“She would not permit it, milord.”

The Noble lifted an eyebrow and turned his gaze on the vampire in mirrored sunglasses. “Indeed? Who are you, stranger? Who sired you? Which brood do you claim?”

“I am called Sonja. My sire was Sir Morgan, but I was abandoned shortly after he Made me.”

Esher leaned forward, staring at the stranger with interest. “You are an orphan?”

“Ronin is a better word for it, milord,” she replied with a crooked smile.

“Why did you slay three of my enemy’s brood?”

“As I told the lady with the fishhooks through her tits—they jumped me so I waxed them. It was a case of mistaken identity, it’s that simple.”

“Why are you in Deadtown?”

“I heard it through the grapevine you were looking for muscle. Rumor has it there’s a brood-war brewing between you and Lord Sinjon.”

Esher stood up abruptly, forcing Nikola to scoot out of his way. “I am merely protecting my interests! It would be foolish of me not to, considering the known aggressiveness of my opponent.”

“Absolutely, milord,” Sonja agreed.

Esher’s boots rang against the hardwood floor as he paced in a circle around the new recruit, eyeing her speculatively. “It is plain even to human eyes that you possess great strength and ability. It radiates from you like heat from a freshly forged sword. I would like you to join me, Sonja. To be on one’s own is no great virtue amongst our kind. You’re constantly on the move, always having to be careful not to expose your true nature to the human cattle, but also alert for rival vampires eager to poach to your territory. Cast your lot with me, my dear, and you need never fear being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the daylight ever again.”

“Sounds tempting. What do I have to do to join?”

“You must surrender some of your blood.”

Sonja stiffened. “You want to partake of my essence?”

Esher smiled and held up a hand in appeasement. “It is only fair, since I am willing to extend to you the same protection I would give to one of my own brood. It is merely a formality.”

“I’ve gotten tired of being harassed by every punk with fangs I run into,” Sonja admitted wearily. “I guess it’s time I belonged to something besides myself. Very well, I’ll do it.”

Esher smiled, clapping her on the shoulder. “You have made a wise decision.” He snapped his fingers and Nikola got to her feet, swaying like a reed. “Nikola! Bring me a dagger!”

The dancer ducked behind the Savonarola and retrieved an ornately jeweled scabbard. Moving like a sleepwalker, she brought it to her master. Esher smiled indulgently and caressed her pallid cheek with the ball of his thumb.

“Is she not exquisite, my friend?” “Yes, she’s quite—lovely,” Sonja replied.

“She is mine, and mine alone. Is that understood?” Esher said, fixing her with a hard stare.

“Perfectly, milord.”

Esher motioned for Sonja to remove her leather jacket. She did as she was instructed, revealing a tattered black Cramps t-shirt underneath. Esher pulled the dagger from the scabbard, revealing a pure platinum blade that gleamed like wet ice in the reflected candlelight. With a single stroke, he opened her inner forearm from elbow to his wrist. The lips of the cut pouted, then opened wide, revealing several layers of skin. Had she been human, Sonja’s life would have come gushing forth in a crimson geyser, but instead Esher was forced to grab the underside of her elbow and squeeze, milking the wound so that it bled. After several long seconds a dark, viscous liquid, looking more like molasses than blood, welled from the cut. Esher pressed his lips to the wound, sucking the blood offered him. His lids fluttered as his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he groaned as if on the brink of orgasm. With a sudden, shuddering gasp, Sonja jerked her arm away and stepped back, blinking like a sleepwalker shaken from a dream.

“You said just a taste!” she snapped, reaching for her jacket.

“That I did,” he agreed as he got to his feet. “Forgive me for forgetting myself. Your essence is…intoxicating. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before.”

“Am I in the club? Do I get a secret decoder ring?”

“From this night on you are under my protection. My only request is that new recruits nest within the catacombs.”

“As you wish, milord,” Sonja replied.

The moment the new recruit exited the audience chamber, a livid Decima turned to face Esher. “Why did you accept her?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. “I don’t trust that mirror-eyed bitch any farther than I can spit!”

“Jealous, my dear?” Esher smirked, as he returned to his seat.

“There’s nothing to be jealous of!” Decima sniffed. “She’s just some smart-ass orphan!”

“You know that’s not true, my dear,” Esher chided. “You could feel her power, just as I did. Whatever else this Sonja may be—she’s a walking weapon.”

“She’s dangerous is what she is, Esher! You’re playing with sunlight, bringing her into your brood! Get rid of her!”

“What? And risk her going over to Sinjon? Besides, I believe in keeping my friends close, but my enemies closer. That is why I insisted she bunk in the catacombs. I fully intend to keep track of our newest recruit’s comings and goings. Besides, should she prove bothersome, I can always cast a spell that will boil her brain like a cabbage.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason you want her underfoot? I didn’t like the way you looked when you tapped her.”

Esher backhanded Decima so hard it sent her flying to the floor. “You forget your place!” he snarled. “Something you’ve been doing far too much of late for my tastes! If I hadn’t Made you myself, you’d be destroyed by now!”

“Forgive me, sire.” Decima muttered as she staggered to her feet, blood oozing from her nostrils.

“Perhaps. But first I want you to send a message to the Black Lodge. Tell Lord Sinjon that there has been a grave misunderstanding between our two factions. Tell him I’m interested in calling a truce and that I would discuss it with him at the Dance Macabre come midnight.”

“As you wish, milord. Is there anything else?”

“No, there is not,” Esher snapped. “Now leave. I would be alone with my bride-to-be.”

“As you command, milord,” Decima whispered, backing out of the audience chamber, her head lowered in ritual submission. But as she closed the heavy oaken doors behind her, she silently swore that she would see to it that both Nikola and bitch called Sonja would soon come to very short and ugly ends.

A FISTFUL OF ROSES

Keep not your roses for my dead, cold brow

The way is lonely, let me feel them now.

—Arabella Smith, “If I Should Die To-Night”

Chapter Nine

Eyes closed to the swirling chaos around her, Sonja followed Esher’s servant, Orgot, into the bowels of the vampire lord’s house. “Pretty fancy digs,” she said as they climbed down an inverted spiral staircase. “But how do you find your way around this joint?”

“Once you become used to it, it ain’t too hard,” the former wino replied. “Lord Esher is the heart of the House, no matter where he may be. Once you find him, gettin’ round is simple enough.”

“Find him? How could I possibly find him in this madhouse?”

“He tasted your essence. Blood calls to blood. All you gotta do is listen.”

Sonja came to a standstill, turning her attention inward. She could feel something vibrating within her, the way fine crystal responds to a tuning fork. The sensation was faint but persistent—and vaguely sexual. “I see what you mean,” she muttered uneasily.

They continued their downward climb until they came to a large cellar with stone walls and a dirt floor. The underground room was huge, occupying twice the space of the building above it. The central vault was crowded with discarded sofas, old couches, tossed-out mattresses, and stained futons, arranged in narrow, crooked rows, like a cross between an army barracks and a homeless shelter.

A network of tunnels, some shored up by brick lintels, others little more than oversized gopher holes, radiated from the main chamber like spokes from a wheel. Save for a few rats and silverfish, the place was deserted.

“This is the main nest,” Orgot explained. “The master’s recruits sleep here during the day.”

“Looks like a real happenin’ place,” she observed drolly.

“Come the dawn it will be jammed. I’d recommend finding a place to doss down before it gets too crowded, if you don’t want to end up sleeping on the floor.”

“What if I decide I want to sleep elsewhere?” she asked.

The wino-turned-vampire shook his head. “That is strictly forbidden. All recruits are to nest within the central vault. Any recruit found bunking outside the catacombs is to be destroyed.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Sonja sighed. She threw her arm about her escort, catching him in a headlock. Although Orgot was far stronger than he appeared, he had a weakness for battening onto his former Skid Row drinking buddies, which made him perpetually tipsy. He yowled like a cat as Sonja’s silver switchblade slipped between his ribs and found his heart. A second later he collapsed like a bag of wet laundry. Sonja wedged his rapidly putrefying corpse under a stained red velvet sofa that reeked of mildew and cat urine where, hopefully, he would go unnoticed for awhile.

She sprinted toward what looked to be the most heavily traveled tunnel. She had no intention of remaining in Lord Esher’s barracks, and the sooner she was outside his immediate reach, the better. The vampire Noble was a powerful, charismatic personality; staying in close proximity to him would only strengthen the bond that now existed between them. She had not planned on allowing him to taste her blood, but there had been no way around it. To refuse would have made Esher even more suspicious of her. As it was, she was having a hard time controlling her revulsion around the Noble and his cohorts. There was nothing in the world she hated more than vampires. For decades she had dedicated herself to killing them on sight. Having to play along with their petty rules and constant head games as if she was just like them was enough to make her sick. But at least she now had a better idea of what was up with Nikola. Getting her away from Esher was going to be tricky. The bastard had her heavily mesmerized and doped to the gills, of course. Such measures went a long way to making unwilling brides far more tractable.

She emerged from the tunnel and found herself in one of the exposed cellars that ringed the House. The open pit was littered with broken bottles, discarded rubbers, and rat and dogs carcasses that had been drained dry of blood. A ramshackle flight of wooden stairs led topside. Upon reaching street level, she spotted three humans dressed in Pointer colors gathered around a burning trashcan. She recognized the skinhead with the spiderweb tattooed on his skull and the man called Obeah, crept into a patch of nearby shadow, using the vampire’s trick of remaining unseen while in plain sight. Satisfied she was properly camouflaged, she focused her attention on the trio’s conversation.

“You with us, cuz?” the skinhead asked.

“I’m with you, Webb,” grinned the third Pointer, who was a tall Anglo with BORN2LOSE tattooed onto his left forearm.

“I don’t want anyone going whack on me when the shit goes down. You pull that on me, I’ll bust a cap in your head. I ain’t gonna shit you, man—we might not make it back from this stunt. But if we do, we’re set for life. Maybe longer. Esher can be very generous when the mood strikes him, dawg.”

Born2Lose nodded his understanding. “I said I’m in, Webb. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

Webb grinned and nodded for Obeah to hand him the knapsack. “One of the Borges Brothers is waitin’ for the Spoons at the docks tonight. Only the Spoons don’t know it. Esher figured out the code they were using to set up their drug buys. So Borges is expectin’ to do a deal tonight, only he thinks he’ll be sellin’ to Sinjon’s boys.” He opened a duffel bag sitting at his feet and pulled a leather jacket out of it, on the back of which was the Jolly Roger emblem of the Black Spoons. “And who are we to tell him different, right?”

Born2Lose frowned at the rival gang jacket. “You want me to wear Spoon colors?”

“Just for a little while, that’s all.”

“I don’t get it—why don’t we just show up, waste the asshole and take his stash?”

“Cause Lord Esher doesn’t want the Borges Brothers down on him! He wants them going after Sinjon. Haven’t you ever heard of divide and conquer, cuz?”

“No,” Born2Lose replied dully.

“Well, that’s what Esher wants, so that’s what he’s gonna get, okay? Now put on the fuckin’ jacket and let’s get this damn show on the road!”

Grumbling under his breath, Born2Lose did as he was told, replacing his colors with the Black Spoon gear. The whole time Sonja watched them from her hiding place completely unnoticed.

She wondered what Esher had up his sleeve. Whatever was going down tonight sounded important; and far be it from her to miss what promised to be the pivotal social event of the season.

“Where’s Rico?” growled Dario Borges, eyeing the youth with the spiderweb tattooed on his skull. “Rico usually handles the buys.”

“Rico had hisself an accident a few nights back,” Webb replied matter-of-factly. “It was very sad. We’re still broke up about it.”

They were standing in Warehouse 69, on the riverside boundary that separated Deadtown from the rest of the city. The place smelled of coffee beans and machine oil. Borges, a small man with a neat mustache and a middle-age paunch, stood with his back to a stack of Arabica beans in burlap bags, flanked by two massively built men in dark suits with bulges in their armpits. At his feet was a Nike gym-bag.

Borges shrugged. “Shit happens. You got the money?”

Webb grinned and opened the briefcase he was carrying, holding it so Borges could see the neatly bundled bills. “Three hundred grand for five kilos, as per the agreement. Would you like to count it?”

Borges smiled tightly and shook his head. “No need. I trust Sinjon—at least when it comes to money.” He snapped his fingers and motioned for one of the bodyguards to take the briefcase, only to have Webb take a step back.

“That may hold true for you,” the skinhead sneered, “but not Lord Sinjon. No sugar without snow, amigo.”

The bodyguard started to reach inside his jacket, but Borges stopped him with a wave of a neatly manicured hand. “Your master trains his servants well,” he said ruefully, unzipping the gym bag and holding it open for inspection.

Webb smiled and reached for the proffered bag—only to drop to the warehouse floor. The first bullet caught Borges square in the heart, dropping him like a stag at a watering hole. The bodyguards were sprayed with bullets before they could clear their holsters.

Webb picked himself off the bloodied warehouse floor and grinned up at his compatriots hidden among the bags of coffee beans, giving them a victorious “thumbs-up.” Obeah and Born2Lose came sliding down from their snipers’ perches, laughing and whooping like excited kids.

“Like takin’ candy from a fuckin’ baby!” Born2Lose crowed, kicking the still-bleeding corpse of one of the bodyguards hard enough to flip it over onto its back.

Webb kneeled and yanked the dead man’s gun free of its holster, studying it intently.

As the flush of adrenaline dissipated, Born 2 Lose frowned and scratched his head in puzzlement. “How come you wanted me in on this job, Webb? Looks like you and Obeah could have jacked the sucka on your own.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Webb agreed, and fired the dead bodyguard’s gun point-blank into Born2Lose’s gut. The Pointer stood there for a long moment, mouth hanging open, staring in dumb surprise at the hole in his abdomen, before dropping to the ground. Webb then leaned over and put the gun he’d just fired in the bodyguard’s hand. “Yo! Obeah! Time for the voodoo that you do so well,” he grinned.

Obeah nodded and removed his machete from its holster on his belt. Webb watched as the former Tonton Macoute handled the weapon with ritualized care.

“Is it true you chopped off a hundred hands with that thing when you was in Haiti?”

Obeah laughed. It was a rich, dark sound. “Hell, no! I chopped off two hundred!” With that, he drew back his right arm and brought the machete blade down on Borges’ neck, severing the head in one blow. He carefully wiped off the blood and rewrapped the weapon, returning it to the knapsack. He then pulled out a large Tupperware container, which he tossed to Webb. Webb grinned and stuck a blunt in his mouth as he peeled open the rubber lid. Obeah scooped up Borges’ head by the hair—what little there was of it—and dropped it inside the bowl. Then Webb dug around inside his purloined gang jacket and pulled out a pair of metal spoons. Chuckling to himself, he set the container down while Obeah produced a disposable lighter. Webb’s grin grew even wider as Obeah lit the blunt clenched between his teeth, then held the butane flame beneath the spoons, blackening their underside before they were dropped inside the bowl.

“You gotta burp these things to lock in the freshness,” Webb grunted. “We wouldn’t want our friend here to go stale when we mail him home.”

From her vantage point high in the rafters of Warehouse 69, Sonja admitted she had to give Esher his due. The bastard was definitely cunning. He knew that an open brood war between himself and Lord Sinjon would attract unwelcome attention, from both the Ruling Class and human society. He would not hazard an open declaration of war until he knew he could take Sinjon down fast and hard—and with a minimum of personal risk. And what better way to destroy your enemy than to arrange for others to do it for you?

Chapter Ten

Decima anxiously scanned the floor of the Dance Macabre from her place in the balcony. “Do you really think he will accept your invitation?”

“Of course he’ll accept,” Esher replied confidently. “Noble etiquette requires that he respond. Besides, the old reptile is curious as to what I’m up to. But forget about Sinjon for the moment—Are you certain the Pointers are disarmed?”

“I personally stripped them of all firearms. But I can tell you they don’t like the idea of a phalanx of Spoons waltzing in here at midnight. I’ve got five recruits guarding the arsenal, just in case someone gets a bright idea and decides they want their weapons back.”

“If they’re feeling that threatened, tell them to mark their turf with piss,” Esher growled. “I’ve got too much riding on this meeting to have it spoiled by a feeble mind with an itchy trigger finger!” His gaze drifted across the floor, then paused upon spotting the glint from a pair of mirrored sunglasses. “Ah! I see my newest recruit has arrived! Have her sent up. I would speak with her.”

“As you wish, milord,” Decima said less-than-enthusiastically.

Although there were four dozen young males on the Dance Macabre’s floor, Sonja spotted only a handful of women in the club, most of whom were either undead or chained to the wall as feeders. While she could feel the gang members’ eyes on her, none of them dared approach her. No doubt they had learned the hard way it didn’t pay to fraternize with female vampires. The room reeked of testosterone and the madness that arises when crowds in great number have surrendered their free will: sort of a cross between a gym locker and an insane asylum. Nazi-era Berlin and Jonestown had smelled much the same. Suddenly she found herself face-to-face with Decima, who glowered at her with open hostility.

“Lord Esher wants to see you.”

Sonja glanced up at the balcony overlooking the dance floor. She could see the Noble seated on a rosewood throne, Nikola hovering by his side. “What for?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” Decima replied sharply. “He wants to see you. You will be seen.”

Sonja followed the crossbow-toting vampire up a spiral staircase at the end of the club. As they reached the upper level, Decima tried to trip her, but she deftly avoided her outstretched foot.

“You’ll have to do better than that, girlfriend,” she sneered. “I’m not some doped-up stripper you can pinch and poke whenever Daddy’s not looking.”

Decima clicked her fang in anger, but regained her composure before the turned to address Esher. “The new recruit is here, as you commanded, milord. Please forgive me—I must attend to security.”

“I don’t think your Gal Friday likes me very much,” Sonja said with a crooked smile.

“There’s not much Decima does like!” Esher replied with a laugh.

“She said something about security—?”

“Sinjon is to arrive here at midnight.”

“Really? I thought you and he were worst buddies.”

“I have decided it is time to declare a truce. Neither of us can afford a brood war right now. We waste too much time in petty squabbles and territorial disputes, when we could both be engaged in far more profitable endeavors. I have decided to try to mend fences, so to speak.”

“Do you think Sinjon will agree to a truce?”

“He is a reasonable man. Or at least he was, back when he was alive.”

“So what did you want to see me about?”

“I want you to serve as a liaison between the House of Esher and the Black Lodge.”

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“What do you mean?” Esher asked, his eyes flashing.

“Don’t get me wrong, milord! I appreciate the trust you’re showing in me. But I did snuff three of his brood earlier tonight. He might still be a tad sore about it.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Esher conceded, a thoughtful look on his face. “Maybe it would be better for all concerned if you made yourself scarce. I’ll bring you into play once Sinjon has had time to forget the incident.” He smiled, flashing her some fang. “I can see you’re already a useful addition, Sonja.” Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of the television monitors. “Aha! Sinjon’s car has just arrived!”

“I’d best be going then, milord,” she said.

The canned music thundering from the club’s speakers came to an abrupt halt. Warily, everyone turned their eyes to the padded red-vinyl door as a phalanx of Black Spoons, walking with the caution of tigers in a lion’s den, came into the club, forming twin lines on either side of the entrance. As a pre-recorded track began to toll midnight, Sinjon entered the club, gliding down the human corridor fashioned by his bodyguards.

Surrounded by a sea of black leather and tattoos, the vampire Noble seemed the very definition of gentility. He was dressed in a high-waisted double-breasted royal blue cutaway coat, with a high-standing collar, pointed lapels, and swallow tails. A cambric ruffle showed from the cuff of the coat sleeves, underneath which he wore a shorter blood-red waistcoat, the front of which extend downward in two V-shaped points. About his neck he wore a jabot, the double frill of silk spilling like snow down the front of his vest. His tight black satin breeches extended to just below the kneecap, and he wore long white silk stockings. About his waist was a blue-and-white silk apron boasting gold fringe, on the front of which was embroidered the symbol of the Freemasons: the eye in the pyramid. On his head sat a powdered wig, and atop that rested a tricorn hat. On his shoes were elaborate diamond buckles that could have supported a small family for a number of years, and in his left hand he carried a cane adorned with a large amber knob. All in all, Sinjon was quite the clothes horse—circa 1776.

Esher greeted his rival in the middle of the dance floor, flanked by his own elite guard. “Welcome to my club, Lord Sinjon! I am pleased you agreed to meet with me,” he smiled.

“I could not ignore such a gracious invitation, Lord Esher,” Sinjon replied. “Besides, there is much we must discuss.”

Esher nodded and motioned for his rival to join him. “Come—let us retire to my private box. We can talk undisturbed there.”

“I trust your men are unarmed?”

“Of course,” Esher replied. “Just as I trust yours are.” “Of course,” Sinjon said with his most reassuring crocodile smile.

From her vantage point on the dance floor, Sonja watched the elaborate charade of cordiality between the rival Nobles. Despite their viciousness—or perhaps, because of it—the Ruling Class were ritually polite whenever they dealt with one another. Most of the elder Nobles were like Sinjon—clinging to the customs of centuries ago. Given time, even the more ‘modern’ vampires like Esher eventually succumbed to such anachronistic eccentricities. After all, who could bother keeping up with human fashions and fads?

Yet those who allowed themselves become trapped in the past risked falling out of touch, and soon found themselves under the heel of younger, more vital rivals. That was clearly what was happening with Sinjon and Esher. But it was up to her to see if she couldn’t manipulate the situation to suit her own ends.

Father Eamon sat in the bell tower, nursing a bottle of cheap bourbon as he watched the lights of the city reflected on the river’s dark surface. He marveled at how close and yet so far away the rest of the world was from Deadtown. He felt a certain excitement—not unlike that kindled by self-abuse—whenever he thought about how easy it would be for him to walk out the front doors of his church and return to the world of shopping centers and fast food. Such an exodus would have to occur during daylight hours, but it could be easily done.

But, of course, that would never happen. He was tied to Deadtown as tightly as a expectant mother to her unborn child. He could no more walk away from his parish than he could fly from the bell tower. He was bound to the neighborhood by chains of guilt and sin just as surely as Christ was nailed to the cross.

His attention was abruptly drawn to a shadow flickering across the street. When he looked again felt his skin crawl with the realization he was watching one of the demons that wandered Deadtown after dark. Even after all these years, he had yet to lose the sense of horror that came from espying such creatures on their unholy rounds. Some, like the thing below, took the shape of comely women, while others wore the flesh of handsome young men. But Father Eamon knew them for what they truly were: the living dead.

The female vampire paused for a moment, the dim light reflecting off the pair of mirrored sunglasses she wore. At first he’d thought she was Esher’s lieutenant, but now he realized that wasn’t the case. Whoever she was, she was new to Deadtown. And since she was headed for the Black Lodge, odds were she most certainly didn’t belong to Esher.

“Please, help yourself,” Esher said, holding out a cordial glass filled with blood. “It’s from my private cellar.”

Sinjon accepted the drink with a gracious nod. “You’re too kind.” He sniffed the proffered liquid as a connoisseur would a fine wine, nodding his approval. “Ah! This one shows fine breeding! Very nice!”

“I’m honored you approve.” Esher replied with a smile that never made it to his eyes.

“Now that we have observed the niceties,” Sinjon said as he set aside his drink, “let us now talk. What is your reason for inviting me here, Esher?”

“I would like to propose a truce.”

Sinjon lifted an eyebrow, but remained silent.

“Despite what you may believe about me, I have no desire to engage in brood war with you, Sinjon.”

“You certainly have a strange way of showing it, then! I have it on good authority your second-in-command slew one of my Spoons on my very doorstep!”

“You must be mistaken!” Esher replied with feigned astonishment. “As it is, there is a rumor circulating amongst the Pointers that the death was in retaliation for the murder of one of their own. You know how foolish these humans can be, constantly committing drive-bys on one another.”

“You’re right about that,” Sinjon admitted grudgingly. “They’re worse than the Gypsies ever thought of being.”

“This is the kind of problem a truce would help solve! The difficulties that have arisen between my brood and yours have more to do with the humans in our service, rather than genuine ill-will on my part. We both spend too much of our time scheming and plotting against one another, instead of tending to our respective businesses. Surely, Lord Sinjon, Deadtown is big enough for both of us to prosper?”

“You are an ambitious man, Esher. Am I to believe that you have no interest in what is mine?”

“True, I am ambitious. But since when has that become a sin in the eyes of our kind? However, I assure you I have no interest in your drug trafficking business.”

“I was running Deadtown back when you were still bar-hopping with that writer friend of yours. You have done nothing since your arrival her but blatantly challenge my control, and now you expect me to ignore your previous effrontery with a wave of a white flag and a promise not to do it again?”

“I fully understand you position, Lord Sinjon. That is why I am willing to appease you by surrendering whatever of mine you think will make things right between us and thereby prove my good will. It does not matter to me whether it is riches, weapons, physical property—I will happily relinquish whatever you so choose.”

Sinjon raised an eyebrow. “No matter what?

Esher smiled and nodded, spreading his hands in a magnanimous gesture. “You are free to pick from all that is mine.”

“I’ll take the girl, then,” Sinjon smiled, pointing at Nikola, who lay curled about her master’s feet like a dropped cape.

Esher’s face suddenly went rigid. “No!” he said sharply. “I’ll grant you anything else, but not her!”

“You promised that I could have whatever I wanted from you in order to appease my pride.” Sinjon said with a smile as sharp as broken glass. “I have chosen the girl. Now give her to me. If you do not, there can be no truce. So unless you surrender your toy dancer to me, you and I have nothing more to say to one another.” The elder vampire rose from his seat, bowing slightly at the waist as he touched the brim of his tricorner hat. “I bid you adieu, Lord Esher.”

Esher tried his best to conceal the rage inside him as Sinjon exited the club. Physically attacking the old reptile in public would not be wise. There was a cracking sound and he looked down to find that he had reduced the armrests of his throne to kindling with his clenched hands.

“Why didn’t you give him the girl?” Decima asked from her hiding place in the shadows.

“The old bastard is canny—I’ll grant him that! You don’t get to be his age and not know some tricks. He had no intention of agreeing to a truce—yet he had to make it look as if he was the affronted party! So he asked for a boon he knew I would not give. But it does not matter. The truce would have simply made it easier to arrange his demise without the messiness of an actual brood war, and make sure his guard was down when the Borges Brothers made their move against him. Now I have to step up my dealing with the cartel. Did you notify the authorities as to the location of the bodies in the warehouse?”

“Yes, milord. I have no doubt it’ll make the morning news. Possibly even the cable news services.”

“Did you send the Borges their brother’s head?”

“I sent it overnight express. It should arrive in Miami by ten a.m.”

“You didn’t pack it in dry ice, did you? I want it nice and juicy when it arrives, so they get the full effect.” Esher glanced at Nikola, who was hovering at his elbow, looking confused. He took her pallid hand in his, caressing the outline of her veins with the tip of his tongue. “You needn’t worry about Sinjon, my darling,” he whispered. “I will never let you go. Not even to death eternal.”

Chapter Eleven

Lord Sinjon’s 1935 Dussenburg, its chassis gleaming like a polished stone, pulled up in front of the Black Lodge. A youth in a Black Spoons jacket scuttled forward to open the rear door. The vampire lord stepped forth, smiling like the proverbial cat.

“Did everything go okay, Master?” The boy asked nervously.

“Swimmingly,” Sinjon replied. Upon being met with a blank stare, he took a deep breath and said: “Yes, everything went ‘okay’, as you call it.”

The boy smiled and nodded. “That’s very good, Master!”

Sinjon brushed past the Spoon with a disgusted sigh. He wasn’t sure if it was the drugs or the gene pool, but the quality of servitors nowadays was appalling. Granted, the Gypsies had hardly been towers of intellect, but in contrast to what was currently available, they seemed like proverbial Renaissance men. Then again, Americans had always possessed a wide streak of thickness. He should know—he’d watched the nation evolve from a conglomerate of ill-conceived commercial ventures into the superpower it was today.

Before his resurrection, Sinjon had known life as the third son of a minor English nobleman. Which is to say that he had been raised in a lifestyle he, himself, could never hope to replicate, as his elder brother had inherited the family title, wealth and holdings, which included shares in Sir Walter Raleigh’s latest venture.

As Sinjon was wanted in London for beating a footman to with his cane while in a drunken rage, it was considered prudent that he be sent to the New World to keep watch over his older brother’s investment. So, in 1587, the nineteen-year-old set out for the Roanoke Colony which, if anything, proved far worse than the Tower. In the summer it was hot and fetid, while in the winter it was bitterly cold and damp. In between those seasons the colony was assailed by fierce coastal storms that snapped the trees like kindling. Insects, poisonous snakes, alligators, and other bothersome fauna existed in abundance. Disease was constant, as was hunger, since the settlers, most of whom were “gentlemen” such as himself, didn’t know the first thing about farming, and were ill-suited to the privations and rigors of such a primitive place. Indeed, those of the upper class mostly waited on those of the lower order, or the few surviving women, to do for them while they sat about and smoked their pipes. However, Roanoke was not London, and the supply of social inferiors was finite. To make matters worse, when the colonists attempted to make slaves of the local natives, called the Croatoans, the savages had the bad manners to resist, adding warfare to the Englishmen’s tribulations.

Over the course of the next two years Roanoke gradually shriveled up and died, the majority dropping dead from disease or malnutrition, while the women were claimed by childbed fever. Many of those that survived the pox and starvation ended up claimed by the surrounding swamps, or fell into the hands of the Croatoans. As Sinjon watched his fellow colonists dwindle away, he silently prayed for the day Raleigh’s ships would return and he could escape the green hell to which his brother had banished him. Anything—even the gallows—was preferable to such a horrid place.

But it was not to be. One moonless night in 1589, a ship indeed arrived at Roanoke Island, but it didn’t belong to Sir Walter Raleigh, nor did it fly the English flag. Sinjon was awakened by screaming and the sound of people running about in a panic. His first thought was that the Croatoans had mounted another attack. He grabbed his sword and charged outside in his nightshirt, only to find the village overrun, not by red-skinned savages but by pirates!

The invaders were everywhere at once, dragging the few surviving colonists from their homes by their hair. Sinjon leapt forward, swinging his sword, and ran one of the pirates through his liver. However, instead of dropping to the ground dead, the bastard merely laughed, revealing fangs as white and sharp as a wolf’s and eyes the color of fresh wine. Before he could react, the undead pirate struck him with the back of his hand, rendering him unconscious.

When Sinjon next awoke, it was to find himself in chains, along with a few surviving colonists and a handful of captured Croatoans. There were twenty of them in all, locked inside in a large metal cage lashed to the deck of a ship with black sails. He soon learned that the ship’s name was The Osiris, and while a handful of human servants tended the ship during the day, come sunset a host of vampires swarmed from the holds to take their places on deck and in the rigging.

The captured colonists’ fate proved to indeed be a cruel one. One by one, they were dragged from their prison and bled dry by the ravenous crew. Once they were drained, the bodies were turned over to the human servants, who jerked them for their meat and then fed what was left to the sharks that followed The Osiris like faithful hounds. He, too, might have found himself in a hammerhead’s belly if not for Captain Blood.

The fierce pirate-king, who claimed to have sailed alongside Odysseus in his day, dressed all in red and wore his dark hair in a single plait that hung down to the middle of his waist. Perhaps the vampire looked into the young Sinjon’s eyes and saw the murderer that lurked within, or perhaps he was inspired by baser impulses, but in any case he decided to make him his cabin boy instead of his evening meal. Although at first terrified, Sinjon soon learned to respond to the captain’s cold caresses, and it wasn’t long before he was helping his master plot raids on other holdings in the New World.

Two years later Captain Blood rewarded his loyal cabin boy by Making him in his image and appointing him First Mate. And so Captain Blood and The Osiris continued for ten more years, raiding throughout the Spanish Main, from the Windward Islands to the Yucatan, until meeting its match in the until The Osiris finally met its match at the hands of a Papal naval vessel called The Lazarus.

Crewed by Inquisitors, the war ship had been sent by Innocent IX to eradicate the undead menace on the high seas once and for all. The warrior-priests were armed with a battery of cannons that fired cannonballs cast from blessed silver, as were their cutlasses and musket shot.

Captain Blood was high in the rigging, bellowing his defiance at The Lazarus, when he was felled by consecrated gunfire. Sinjon watched, helpless, as his lover’s body plummeted into the water below, where it was savaged by the sharks that churned the sea foam to a crimson froth.

Sinjon managed to survive the battle by tossing one of the waterproofed coffins in the hold overboard and then climbing in, closing the lid tight behind him. Days later he made landfall on the coast of Portugal. For several years afterward he wandered the great cities of Europe, drifting in and out of both vampire and human society, until finally returning to England, where he murdered the brother who had sent him off to Roanoke, twenty years before. He also made sure that his nephews and nieces all met with quick and mysterious ends by a strange wasting sickness.

Having cleared the way for himself, he came forward, posing as a distant cousin, and claimed the ancestral title and lands for his own. Thus camouflaged, he returned to high society, where he became known for his taste for London’s nightlife.

Over the next century Sinjon orchestrated a series of false identities for himself, being careful to drop out of various social circles before his failure to age could draw undue attention. Often he would have an older human servant pretend to be him, so he could accompany ‘himself’ in public as his own look-alike son or grandson. It was a time of great change, both political and social, what with the Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment. Religion’s chokehold on the minds of humanity had finally started to weaken, and the centuries-old superstitions gradually began to give way to rational thinking. As science began its rise in the minds of men, belief in such things as vampires began to fade away, making it easier for Sinjon to mingle in human social circles without fear of raising suspicion.

However, although the dogma that had given birth to the Inquisition was beginning to disappear, humanity was still unprepared to stride naked into the cold, stark light of the Rational Universe. During this time there was a growth in “secret societies,” the largest since the days of the mystery cults that infested Rome during the age of the first Caesars. Sinjon saw the emergence of the Rosicrucians, Freemasons and other quasi-mystic fraternities as a unique opportunity to do what his kind had always done with human society—run it from behind the scenes, but this time using the complicity of unwitting humans.

In 1717 Sinjon joined the Grand Lodge of London, the Master of which was Desaguliers, the founding father of modern Freemasonry. Not long after, he also became a member of the notorious Hell Fire Club, a secret society composed largely of free-thinkers, libertines and philosophers, who played at Satanism while enjoying the occasional orgy. It was through these two organizations that he became familiar with the American inventor and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin.

Sinjon was nearing his second century and Franklin nearing fifty years of age when they first met. The printer was representing the Pennsylvania legislature in London, petitioning for the right to tax the lands of the Penn family in order to raise revenue for the colony, which had suffered financial setbacks following the French and Indian War. Six years earlier he had published Experiments and Observations on Electricity, where he detailed his adventure of flying a kite in a thunderstorm, and soon won international fame for being one of the world’s leading scientific thinkers.

Perhaps it was his bad experience with Roanoke, but up until then Sinjon had normally viewed those from the Colonies as bumpkins of the worst sort. But Franklin possessed a quick wit and quiet dignity that affected the vampire unlike any other human before him. He found himself enjoying the American’s company and relishing their conversations. Franklin talked a great deal about his home, Philadelphia, and the more he spoke of the Colonies and the activities going on there, the more Sinjon came to realize that America was on the verge of becoming a brand-new nation—one in which the potential for advancement and success for those brave enough to realize their dreams was boundless.

The more Sinjon thought about it, the more he came to realize that there were still plenty of Nobles wandering about the Continent who could date their origins back to Troy or beyond. Competition among these older, more powerful vampires was keen, as they constantly jockeyed amongst themselves for the title of Prince or Duke or Margrave. There was little opportunity for a vampire as relatively young as himself to make his mark in Europe. Sinjon knew how resistant the Ruling Class was when it came to acknowledging change. The New World had been added to the globe nearly three hundred years before, but the Nobles were just starting to notice it. So he resolved to go someplace where it would be far easier to establish a foothold and make a name for himself. Once again he abandoned the nightlife of London, but this time around his accommodations were far more to his liking than those on Roanoke Island, even if he was surrounded by bumpkins.

Franklin proved quite eager to introduce his well-born expatriate friend to his social circle, which included the likes of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Adams brothers, Alexander Hamilton and Paul Revere. Jefferson had eyed Sinjon far too sharply for his tastes, but otherwise he found his way into America’s power elite as easily as he had Europe’s.

The upheaval of the Revolutionary War was a convenient excuse to kill his former identity yet again and emerge, phoenix-like, as his own heir. He left Philadelphia and went in search of a city where he would not be so easily recognized. He ended up in a seaport that sat at the head of an estuary, a stone’s throw from the huge bay that had welcomed many of the original settlers who came to this strange new world. It was there that he arrived at the idea of Deadtown.

Using different names and various dummy companies, he set about buying up property. It wasn’t difficult, as the neighborhood was seedy and rundown, even back then. Using his Freemason connections, combined with prodigious bribes, Sinjon arranged it so special provisions were written into the city charter; provisions none but a handful of mayors and aldermen would ever lay eyes on.

In the long decades since then, Sinjon’s human agencies had made sure the proper amount of money got into the proper hands at the proper time, effectively keeping Deadtown ‘sub rosa’ for over two centuries. It was this arrangement, sealed with secret handshakes, that kept the lights running and the water flowing in a part of the city that, on paper, didn’t exist.

Deadtown was Sinjon’s finest achievement, and he had been its undisputed lord and master for generations. Those who dared challenge his supremacy in the past had tasted Death Everlasting. Now he was being confronted by yet another intruder, in the form of the wizard Esher. But now, but for the first time in his almost four hundred and fifty years of existence, Sinjon was afraid. Not that he would ever show it, of course. If his human servants caught wind of his being intimidated, they would abandon him in droves. Unlike the Gypsies of old, who could be counted on for their tribal loyalty, the Black Spoons followed the bastard with the most power, the hardest heart, and the coldest blood. Any sign of weakness on his part was thereby cause for a vote of no confidence.

As he headed up the grand marble staircase to his favorite’s boudoir, Sinjon thought about Esher’s pet human and shook his head. He had no true desire for the fragile little ballerina—he’d merely asked for her to embarrass the wizard and force him to show his real colors. Still, he couldn’t blame his rival for being so attached; after all, it was in their nature to fall in love with the living.

Sinjon pushed open the boudoir door, tossing his tricorner hat onto the purple coverlet on the canopied bed. “Johan—Daddy’s home! Where are you, my boy?”

Something stirred from behind the Chinese screen in the corner of the room and a sixteen-year-old boy with the face of an overripe Cupid stepped out into view.

“What were you doing behind there, you silly?” Sinjon chuckled. “Were you hoping to surprise Daddy, eh?”

“No,” replied a female voice. “But I was.”

The boy took a second hesitant step, revealing the female vampire standing behind him, an open switchblade pressed into his back. Sinjon’s eyes blazed and he advanced on the intruder, fangs bared, hissing like a basket of angry cobras.

“Keep back!” she barked, twisting the boy’s arm behind him so he yelped. “Stay your distance or so help me, I’ll slice his spinal cord in two!”

Sinjon drew back, glowering at the intruder. “Who are you, woman?”

“My name is Sonja.”

“Are you one of Esher’s wretched recruits?”

“That’s what he’d like to think.”

“What are you doing in the Black Lodge?”

“I’ve come here to do you a favor.”

“Somehow I doubt your sincerity.”

“Maybe this will prove I mean you no ill-will, then,” she said, shoving the frightened boy in his direction. “Here, take your sex-toy back! And by the way—Esher is setting you up!”

Johan stumbled but recovered his balance before he could fall, turning to give her the finger. “Fuck you, bitch! Kill her, Daddy!”

“Shut up and sit down,” Sinjon replied. “I would talk to our visitor.” “But, Daddy—!”

“Sit down and shut up!” The vampire hissed, flashing his fangs.

Johan grudgingly did as he was told, but not before shooting a venomous look in Sonja’s direction.

“Now, as you were saying, my dear?” Sinjon said, gesturing for her to continue.

“Earlier this evening, about the time you were received your invitation to Esher’s club, I followed three of his goons out to the waterfront. Funny thing was, they were all wearing Black Spoon colors. Imagine that. They were there to meet with a friend of yours called Borges. The goons smoked him and his bodyguards and made it look like the Spoons did it. I have to say it was a pretty sweet frame-job. You should be hangin’ in the Louvre.”

“I see,” he muttered, his voice little more than a whisper. “What else do you know?”

Sonja moved to stand in front of the fireplace, leaning against the mantelpiece. “I know that Esher’s men took Borges’ stash when they whacked him. Esher’s sitting on it, for now. Oh, and he’s arranging a get-together with the bereaved siblings. He figures they’ll want to avenge their brother’s death, but might be unwilling to go up against you without some vampire muscle on their side. Once you’re out of the picture, he’ll give ’em back their rock candy, tell them he pried it from your cold dead fingers, and then he’ll end up with both the arms and the hard drug business for the East Coast, and Deadtown will belong to him.”

“How can we be sure she’s not lying about all this?” Johan asked, keeping a cautious eye on Sonja.

“Because I know she’s not!” Sinjon growled. “You don’t get to be as old as I am without learning to recognize the truth when you hear it. I can feel it in my bones. It explains a lot of things—especially that ridiculous attempt at a truce! Esher is hardly the type to fear the censure of the Ruling Class. But what I don’t understand, my lovely, is what do you get out of all this?”

Sonja shrugged. “I have my reasons. What does it matter to you, as long as you benefit?”

“True enough,” Sinjon agreed. “The enemy of my enemy is my ally. So what do you propose we do?”

“I will notify you as soon as “I know when and where Esher will rendezvous with the Borges Brothers. My messenger will be a small boy named Ryan. I want it made clear to your followers, undead and human alike, that he is not to be harmed in any way. And if they see any of Esher’s men trying to hurt the child, they’re to intercede on his behalf—is that clear?”

“Perfectly. But what is this child to you?”

“He is the son of Esher’s bride-to be. Esher wants the boy dead.”

Sinjon grinned, exposing his fangs. “Say no more, my dear! If the child’s existence is a thorn in Esher’s side, then I shall see to it that he makes old bones! But what do you suggest we do?”

“You will attack Esher during his rendezvous with the Brothers outside of Deadtown, and therefore he will not be able to escape to the safety of his wizard’s den quite so easily. While you keep him and the Pointers busy, I will search the House for the stolen drugs. Only by returning the cocaine can you hope to clear your name with the Brothers. If anything, they are even less trusting than vampires when it comes to these situations.”

“When do you think Esher will rendezvous with the cartel?”

“Did you agree to the truce tonight?”

“No.”

“It will be soon, then. Esher is not one to waste time.”

Chapter Twelve

The sun was already brightening the morning sky when Eddie answered the door, the abbreviated double-barreled snout of his shotgun thrust between the doorjamb and the security chain like a suspicious animal. “Who the fuck is it?” he growled.

“It’s me, Eddie.”

The shotgun was quickly withdrawn and the door opened, allowing her to enter. Eddie stood in his book-strewn front parlor, dressed in a pair of tattered jeans and a bowling shirt, his wispy white hair still tousled from bed. Along with the sawed-off, there was a knife tucked into a sheath on his hip. There was no such thing as sleeping easy in Deadtown.

“Where’s Ryan?”

“He’s out like a light. He usually crashes an hour or two before dawn. He might as well be nocturnal, for the hours he keeps.” Eddie motioned to the kitchen. “C’mon, I’ll fix us some coffee. Oops—sorry! I forgot.”

Sonja eased into the spare chair as Eddie busied himself with filling the teakettle and lighting the pilot light. She noticed that Ryan’s bed under the sink was curtained off by a piece of discarded drapery, giving the boy a little privacy.

“How did it go?” Eddie asked.

“I got inside both Esher’s and Sinjon’s strongholds. Of the two, Esher is the more dangerous quarry. He is young, as vampires go, and exceptionally ambitious.”

“A ‘lean and hungry look’, eh?”

“Exactly. And those are the most dangerous vampires to contend with. They have much to win—and a lot to lose. Sinjon, on the other hand, is what could be called ‘a reasonable monster.’ He has what he wants, but fears losing it. It makes him easier to manipulate. He is a museum piece, but is loath to admit it. I’ve dealt with his kind before: anachronisms clinging to the era that saw their greatest glory. Still, I’d be a fool to underestimate him. Elder vampires such as Sinjon came of age during times far harder and more punishing than most could possibly imagine. His foppery hides a will of iron and a heart of coal.”

“Sound like real sweethearts, the pair of ’em.” Eddie lowered his voice, glancing over at Ryan’s sleeping nook. “What about Nikola? Did you see her?”

Sonja nodded. “Is she okay?”

“She’s alive and more-or-less still human.”

Eddie raised an eyebrow, but before he could say anything, the kettle began its shrill wail. He quickly snatched the pot off the boil, not wanting to wake the boy. He spooned instant coffee and powdered creamer into a cracked mug that read WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMA. “She’s that bad, huh?”

“Do you want it straight?” “Do I have a choice?”

Sonja ran her fingers through her hair, and for a split second Eddie glimpsed the utter weariness inside her. It was the deep-down tired seen in veterans of heavy trench warfare. “I think I can get her away from Esher. But it might not do any good. She’s heavily mesmerized, plus I think he’s been drugging her—and not with heroin or other street crap. He’s got a bokor working for him.”

“A what?”

“Voodoo witch doctor. A mean-ass motherfucker named Obeah that carries a machete.”

Eddie paled and his coffee mug trembled slightly. “I know the bastard you’re talking about. He’s nasty business. But what’s that have to do with drugs—?”

“I think Esher’s got Nikola strung out on zombie dust.”

“Zombies? Aw, c’mon, man! You’re pulling my leg, right?” Eddie laughed.

Sonja chuckled ruefully. “You’re living in a neighborhood swarming with the living dead, and you don’t believe in zombies? Besides, it’s not like the crap in the movies. Witch-doctors use the neural toxin from blowfish. Normally it’ll paralyze you so thoroughly your heart can’t beat and you can’t breathe. But in the right amounts it’s a powerful drug, and under certain circumstances it can be used to induce a deathlike state.

“Let’s say a bokor gets mad at some schmuck, and he puts a curse on him in public. Then he goes and slips the zombie dust into the schmuck’s Wheaties. Next thing you know, there’s a dead schmuck—but the thing is, he’s not really dead. He just looks it, right? So the schmuck gets stuck in the ground, and then the bokor digs him up and feeds him the antidote. Next thing you know there’s a dead schmuck walking around—except he’s not really dead. He’s a zombie schmuck. They tend to suffer from brain damage, because of oxygen deprivation from being underground, so they end up a little slow—hell, they’re a lot slow! Zombies can’t feel much in the way of pain, nor can they communicate very well. About the only things they want out of life—if you can call it that—from that point on is food and zombie dust. I guess they’re the only pleasures they can still feel. And they’ll do anything to get those two things. And since the bokor pretty much has the zombie dust thing sewn up, they end up becoming his personal slaves for the rest of eternity.”

“And this is what Esher’s trying to do to Nikola?”

“Not exactly. He’s got her messed up on dust, but he doesn’t want to zombify her. He’s looking to Make her his bride.”

“You mean turn her into a vampire?”

“Yeah,” she replied with a nod. “When vampires decide to take a bride, they often select a human with a strong dark side, one they feel has the potential for evil, and groom them before the transformation. Sometimes the humans respond eagerly, but other times the human’s dark side is buried so deep they commit suicide rather than let it out. I suspect that is the reason she’s being drugged. Esher wants to keep her susceptible to his influence, but fears what she might do to herself when he’s not there to control her.”

“Then if that’s the case—there might be some hope for her, after all,” Eddie pointed out.

“Perhaps. But as long as Esher is nearby, she’s completely his creature. That kind of mind control does serious damage. If I get her away from him, she may still remain—how shall I put it?—’highly susceptible’ to those with a stronger personality. And at this point, Barney the Dinosaur has a stronger will than she does.”

“You don’t exactly paint a rosy picture, do you?” Eddie grunted. “You asked for it straight.”

“Yeah. I did, didn’t I?” he sighed, draining the last of his coffee. “So what do you propose doing?”

“The only way both Ryan and his mother will be safe is if Esher is well and truly dead.”

Eddie lowered the mug, eyeing her as if she’d suddenly grown a second head. “You’re planning on killing him?”

“That was my intention all along, even before I met you and Ryan.”

“Honey, you don’t happen to have an army I might have missed stashed in that gym bag of yours, do you?”

Sonja stifled a yawn as she stood up, stretching like a cat. “Killing him will be easy. Not getting myself killed in the bargain—that’s the tricky part! Now, if you’ll excuse me—it’s been a long night, and I need my rest if I’m to keep on top of what’s going down tonight. Are there any other people in this building?”

“Not anymore. Since things started jumpin’ round here, most of the squatters moved to the outer fringes of Deadtown. No one wants to be in the thick of it.”

Sonja gathered up her belongings and headed for the door. “I’ll bunk down in the attic, if it’s all the same to you. I like being close to rooftops. They’re handier than back doors, when you have unexpected visitors.”

Eddie frowned and fidgeted with the keys. “Its daylight out there, you know.” “I’m well aware of that,” she replied.

“But the sun’s up!”

“It usually is when it’s daylight.”

“Are you sure you wanna go out right now?”

“Eddie, I appreciate the concern, but open the fuckin’ door, okay? I’m not gonna catch fire.”

Eddie looked unconvinced, but he unlocked the door anyway. Sonja patted his shoulder as she slipped past the threshold into the morning sunshine. “Don’t worry about me,” she chided. “I’ve got my sunscreen on.”

The attic smelled of dust, rat turds, dry rot and mildew. The middle of the room was tall enough for a man to stand upright, while the far corners would make a mouse hunchbacked. It wasn’t the Taj Mahal, but it was far from the worst place that she’d used as a crashpad. She dragged a stained mattress out from under the eaves, displacing a pile of discarded needles and empty crack vials. The mattress reeked of piss and other secretions, but it would have to do.

The only way in or out of the attic was an oculus window set on a hinge, which she kept tilted open for ventilation. As she dropped onto her haunches to root through her gym bag, she glanced out the window—and found herself staring at a bell tower. Although at least a few blocks away, since the surrounding tenements were only three or four stories tall, the view was unobstructed. She dimly remembered passing what might have been a church on her way to the Black Lodge the night before, but had not realized it was so close to Eddie’s squat.

Although strong light was bothersome to her, if not painful, her eyesight was still five times sharper than the average human’s. As she squinted against the sun, she could see that the church bells had long since been removed. Something moved in the deep shadows of the belfry—something too large to be a bird or a bat. Whatever the skulker might be, it certainly couldn’t be undead.

She was too tired to let the problem of the belfry peeper’s identity occupy her for more than a few seconds. Although she could move around during the day and was immune to sunlight, that didn’t mean she relished it. She needed to go to ground in order to recharge her energy stores and allow her body to repair whatever damage may have been done to it. Besides, she’d put in a long, exhausting night’s work, and she needed her rest.

As she dropped onto the mattress, her blood pressure plummeted like a stone, as did her respiratory and heart rate. To all outward appearances, she was dead—at least until the sun went down.

Chapter Thirteen

In her dreams, she sees herself climb into the car while looking down from above, like a hovering angel. Only, it’s not really her: it’s Denise Thorne, the person she used to be. She watches, mute and intangible, as her former self plods steadily onward toward her fate, helpless to change the course of events. Surely, she thinks, this is a taste of what Hell is like.

She sees the dashing and debonair gentleman playboy, Lord Morgan, metamorphose into a leering monster, red of tooth and claw. She bears silent witness as the pallid, ruby-eyed monster takes the terrified Denise’s young mind and body and rapes both with cruel abandon. She looks on as the vampire slakes his unnatural lusts by flooding her womb with dead sperm while contaminating her bloodstream with the venom from his fangs, in a grotesque parody of human reproduction. She watches her own creation as she is born, full-grown, from the shattered mind and destroyed soul of Denise Thorne, like Athena springing from Zeus’ forehead, while Morgan tosses her naked body from the back of the Rolls-Royce as if she were an empty fast-food wrapper, leaving her for dead in the gutters of London’s East End. She is only moments old, but already she is beginning to learn the name of the game: Survival of the Fittest.

Her surroundings warp and time speeds up, as it does in dreams. Now she is standing atop the Empire State Building. Decades have passed, and Denise is long gone. Now there is only Sonja Blue. She is there with Lord Morgan—only he is no longer the dashing debonair playboy. His face is scarred, his lips pulled into a permanent, disfiguring sneer, and his left eye is as white as a pearl. Sonja watches as she caresses the vampire lord’s ruined face as gently as a lover’s—only to bury her fangs in his throat. Morgan looks surprised, then scared, as she drains him of his life force. He struggles and tries to escape her embrace, but it’s no use—his limbs are already starting to wither. He screams and flails his wasted arms in protest as she reduces him to a dried-out husk. The sky above them turns the color of a ripe bruise and lightning stitches the bellies of immense thunderclouds. Sated, she discards his now-desiccated remains. Lord Morgan now looks more like a scarecrow than a man. Drained of his very essence, the Noble still pleads for mercy. Sonja watches dispassionately as she brings the heel of her boot down on the vampire lord’s skull, snuffing out a malignancy that has stretched seven centuries.

As she observes these things, Sonja realizes she should feel exaltation, joy, or, at the very least, a perverse pleasure in delivering the ultimate justice to the bastard who stole her humanity. Instead, all there is only rage: the churning fury of the whirlwind.

She looks up into the rippling dream-sky, with its ominous thunderclouds, and sees a pair of eyes. They are blood red and without pupil or white—just huge, blood-filled eyes. She understands then, as dreamers always know things that go unspoken in their dreams, that she is looking into the eyes of the Other: the vampiric side of her own personality; the part of her that revels in the pain of others, that delights in the suffering of enemies. It is the side of her she fears and yet needs if she is to survive.

The Other looks down on her and its voice shakes the heavens. Sonja claps her hands to her ears, even though she knows she is dreaming.

“Beware,” it intones. “Beware the warlock.”

Crimson wells from the Other’s eyes and spills from the sky. Wherever the bloody tears strike steam rises up, accompanied by the hissing of snakes. Some of it splashes onto her hand, scalding it. Sonja cries out and draws back in pain …

Only to find Ryan’s pale face before her, his eyes wide with fear. With a gasp of shocked surprise, she let go of the child’s throat.

“Sorry, kid,” she rasped, trying her best to conceal the shuddering that racked her body like a junkie. “I must have been having a bad dream.”

The boy scuttled over to the window, watching her cautiously as he massaged his neck. She groaned under her breath and wondered if there was a way to possibly feel worse than she did at that moment. Despite his street-toughness, Ryan was only a child, and a sorely used one, at that. She rolled off the mattress in a single, fluid moment, picking up her leather jacket as she did so.

“I thought you said you aren’t like them,” the boy said accusingly.

Sonja sighed and combed her fingers through the unruly tangle of her hair. “I try to keep the bad part of me under control—but sometimes it gets out. And when that happens, I don’t want anyone I care about around me, because I’m afraid I’ll hurt them. That’s why I decided to camp out up here, instead of with you and Eddie.”

Ryan tilted his head. “Do you care about me?”

“Yeah, I guess I do, because I sure don’t want to hurt you. Not now, not ever. That’s why I’m going to free your mother from Esher.”

The boy darted forward, wrapping his arms about her waist, burying his face into her stomach. Despite his slight build, he had a grip like an anaconda. It had been a long time since a child had hugged her like that. Too long.

“Don’t get your hopes up just yet, okay?” She smiled as she stroked his hair. “I’ve got a lot of strings to pull on this one, and I need your help to make sure everything works out.”

“I’ll do anything you tell me to!” Ryan promised, tilting his head back to look at her.

“I don’t doubt it. You’re a brave kid. And you’ll need every last ounce of that courage if you want to get your mother away from Esher. I have to send a message to Sinjon as to what Esher is up to—and I’ll need you to take it to the Black Lodge. Don’t look so scared—Sinjon has promised to place you under his protection, which will keep you safe while I’m not around. But just to be on the safe side, I’m going to give you this.”

She reached inside the neck of her Cramps T-shirt and withdrew a thin silver chain from around her neck. At the end of the chain hung a silver crucifix fashioned to resemble briar thorns. She looped it about the boy’s neck.

“Vampires fear silver above all else. None of them will dare touch you while you wear this.”

Ryan moved to the attic window to study the necklace in the last of the dying light. As Sonja looked past the boy to the church bell tower, she remembered the shadowy figure she’d glimpsed before we went to ground.

“Ryan—what is that building over there?”

“Eddie says it’s a church. Saint Ever-Ready or something.”

“Does anybody live there?”

“There’s an old guy who stays inside it, I think. He wears a long black dress with a white thing sticking up in front. Cloudy says he’s a father, but I never see any kids with him. The only time he comes out is to go to the liquor store. I think he’s kind of crazy, but not bad crazy, like some of the homeless guys kinda are. He used to leave me scraps, back when I was on the streets.”

Sonja returned her gaze to the bell tower. A priest? In Deadtown?

How interesting.

As Sonja strode through the House of Esher’s twisted corridors, she could feel its master drawing her towards him, as a magnet attracts an iron filing. As unwelcome as that connections was, it at least enabled her to traverse the diabolical funhouse unescorted. When she last spoke to Eddie, she had neglected mentioning that she had been forced to surrender some of her blood to Esher in order to carry out her plan, for fear that it would erode what trust he had in her. While she was secure in her own willpower, she had to admit that Esher possessed a great deal of charisma. It was easy to see why the weaker, less secure vampires flocked to him.

She found the Noble in his audience chamber, holding court surrounded by his brood, most of whom looked to have started unlife as drifters or unwary tourists—the easiest prey for today’s urban vampire. Unremarkable in Life, they remained equally anonymous in Undeath, watching their master’s every nuance avidly, like starving men outside the window of a bakery. Sonja scanned the room and noticed that Nikola was nowhere to be seen.

“Tonight we are on the cusp of great change!” Esher announced. “The results will be far-reaching—inside and outside of Deadtown!”

There was muttering among the gathered vampires. One of them, who looked like a junior executive, spoke up: “What is the nature of this great change, milord?”

“That is none of your concern,” he replied sternly. “All I will say is that it will benefit all who have sworn allegiance to me.” The recruits fell to talking among themselves again, but Esher silenced them with a clap of his hands. “Enough talking! All of you go to the club and await my orders!” The brood bowed as one, and began filing out of the audience chamber. As Sonja moved to follow them, Esher’s voice rang out. “A moment, if you please, Sonja. I would speak with you.”

“As you command, milord,” she replied, forcing a smile.

Esher leaned forward in his seat, resting his chin on his fist. “You did not nest in the barracks. And my servant, Orgot, has not been seen since I sent him down into the catacombs with you. I have called to him, blood to blood, but he has not responded.”

“I was on the other side of Deadtown at cockcrow,” she lied. “I had to doss down in an empty building until the sunset. As for your man Orgot, the last time I saw him he was lurching down an alley looking for a tipple.”

“That I do not doubt,” Esher sighed. “A drunk is a drunk, whether he gets his booze from the neck of a bottle or a wino. I would not be surprised if the fool got caught by the sun after passing out in the gutter. As for your skirting the conditions I placed upon you—I will forgive you once, and one time only. Watch your step, Sonja. I am quick to punish those who displease me. You do not want to be on my bad side.”

“Your will is law, milord,” she replied with a bow of her head.

“I am glad to hear it,” the vampire lord said with a dry laugh. “I have need of your help this evening. In two hours time I am to meet with the Borges Brothers.”

“Aren’t they Sinjon’s allies?” she asked, feigning surprise.

“Yes,” he replied with a sly smile. “Hence the change I spoke of.”

“Are they coming to Deadtown?”

“They refuse to set foot here, even during the day,” Esher replied. “The Borges Brothers are superstitious fools, born of peasant farmers. Still, their fear of Deadtown doesn’t stop them from trafficking with its devils. I am to meet with them at a restaurant they own in the city—one that serves as a front for their operations.”

“Do you trust them?”

“I have nothing to fear from humans. They are tools in my hand, nothing more. As for you, since Decima will be accompanying me to the meeting, you will stay here and guard Nikola.”

“But I thought that was Webb and Obeah’s job?”

“Normally, that is the case. But they are humans, after all. I need a vampire sentry to back them up, in case Sinjon makes a move to claim Nikola as his prize. He insists that I have breached Noble etiquette, and that she now belongs to him!”

Decima stepped forward and gingerly cleared her throat. “Technically, he’s right, milord. You were the one who told him to choose whatever he wanted…”

“I don’t care if he’s in the right!” Esher snarled. “I’ll see him in Hell before I surrender her! And as for you”, he said, pointing his finger at Sonja, “you will keep watch over Nikola until I return, is that understood?”

“Perfectly, milord,” Sonja and Decima replied in unison.

As Sonja left the House of Esher, she crossed the street and paused to place one of her boots onto the curb. “Are you there, kid?” she whispered as she bent to tighten her laces.

“I’m here,” the boy answered, his pale face peeking up from underneath the sewer grate.

“Take this to Sinjon,” she said as she slipped him a piece of folded paper. “Esher’s ordered me to guard your mother tonight.”

“Are you going to rescue her?”

“I’m going to try. But Obeah and Webb are still with her.”

“I bet you can kill them easy!” Ryan said confidently.

“Just deliver the note, okay, kid?” she said. As she walked back across the street, she silently cursed herself for telling Ryan about his mom. She didn’t want the kid to get his hopes up too high.

Decima emerged from the front door and stood glaring at Sonja. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was just finishing up a perimeter check,” Sonja explained. “By the way, where did all the Pointers go?”

“Lord Esher pulled the humans from guard duty and sent them to the club,” Decima replied tartly. “He doesn’t want Sinjon to notice a drop-off in attendance at the Dance Macabre tonight and get suspicious. The Master does not wish to be seen leaving Deadtown, so he will be leaving the House via one of the auxiliary tunnels in the next ten minutes. Webb and Obeah are on their way with the dancer. Once she is here, you are to escort her to Lord Esher’s private chambers, then remain on guard until his return. Is that clear?”

“Like crystal.”

“It better be, bitch!” Decima snarled. “Because if anything happens to the dancer, you are the one to answer for it!” With that, Esher’s lieutenant turned and marched into the stronghold.

“Bite me,” Sonja growled as she flipped a bird at the female vampire’s retreating back. She glanced at her watch. She hoped the kid didn’t run into trouble reaching Sinjon.

Ryan leaned cautiously out of the dark doorway and scanned the street for signs of Esher’s men, clutching Sonja’s note to his chest like a life preserver. He glanced down at the silver-thorn crucifix Sonja had given him. It was heavy and tended to swing like a pendulum when he ran. After a moment’s deliberation, he carefully rearranged it so that it rested between his ragged jersey and his undershirt.

Taking a deep breath, he darted from his hiding place and headed in the direction of the shadowed alleyway across the street. He knew to keep his head down and shoulders hunched and make himself as small as possible, so if one of the Pointers spotted him out of the corner of their eye, they’d mistake him for a stray dog. Not that there were many stray animals wandering the streets in Deadtown, nowadays.

He was still holding his breath as he cleared the curb and made the entrance of the alley, only to have it escape him in a single gasp as he collided with a pair of legs. Although he was sent sprawling, he did not relinquish his grip on the note.

A heavyset African-American wearing a Pointer jacket and sporting the letters “BMF” shaved into the side of his head glowered down at Ryan. He held a 40 of Olde English malt liquor in one meaty hand and a blunt in the other.

“You tryin’ t’fuck with me, punk?” BMF growled. His frown deepened as he got a better look at the boy. “Hold on—! You that kid—! The one Esher wants dead!”

Ryan scrambled to his feet and began to run. BMF swore and tossed aside his malt liquor in order to give chase. Although he was younger and lighter than his pursuer, the gang-member’s legs were easily three times longer than his. His eyes darted about frantically, looking for a broken basement window or an old coal chute he could scoot down.

As he turned the corner, he saw the church, which meant he was close to the Black Lodge. But as he glanced back over his shoulder, he tripped and fell headlong onto the cobblestones. His first instinct was to cry—but the tears were not those of a child who has hurt himself while playing. They were tears of untold grief and guilt. He had failed to get the message to Sinjon. And because of his failure, he was never going to see his mother ever again. His eyes swimming with tears, he lifted his head to look at his killer. But instead he found himself staring up at the face of a boy who appeared to be no more than sixteen, with corpse-white skin and lips as red and full as ripe tomatoes.

“What have we here?” purred the vampire. “A midnight snack, perhaps?”

A second, equally pallid face, even younger than the first, loomed into view. “He’s bleeding, Tristan!” the other vampire said with breathless excitement.

“So I see, Ethan,” Tristan replied. “Such a yummy little boy! I could eat him right up!”

“Back off, motherfuckers! The punk’s mine!” BMF shouted. The Pointer was standing twenty feet away and pointing a flaregun at the vampires. “Don’t try an’ mess with me! I’ll burn your lily-white asses!”

Tristan sneered, exposing his fangs, and raised his hands. “Please don’t shoot, Mr. Gangbanger!”

Ryan lay on the hard cobblestones, looking from the vampires to the Pointer and back again when, suddenly, the one called Ethan wasn’t there anymore. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and he simply disappeared. A second later BMF screamed as his gun arm was turned completely around in its socket. Ethan suddenly reappeared, only now he was standing behind the Pointer and holding the flare gun.

Tristan’s snide smile disappeared, to be replaced by a look of genuine hate as he leapt forward and grabbed BMF’s head between his hands. “Lesson Number One is humans don’t threaten vampires,” he growled into the terrified gang-member’s face. “Lesson Number Two is that there is no Lesson Number Two.” With a twitch of his hands, Tristan turned BMF’s head around on his shoulders so that he had an unobstructed—and final—view of his own ass.

“Now, where were we?” Tristan said, dusting off his hands. He bent down and grabbed Ryan by his shirtfront, jerking the boy back onto his feet. The vampire’s tongue darted out and licked at the blood trickling from a cut on the child’s forehead, only to recoil with a hiss like an angry cat.

“Silver!”

Ryan looked down and realized that the thorny crucifix had worked its way free from his clothing. Seeing the look of fear in the vampires’ eyes, he found the courage to speak up.

“I’m to bring this to Sinjon,” he said, holding up the message.

“It’s the boy we were told about!” Ethan said, realization sparking in his wine-red eyes. “We are to bring the boy directly to Lord Sinjon!”

“What would our sire want with a wretched child?” Tristan asked, regarding Ryan with open distaste.

“He is under Lord Sinjon’s protection,” Ethan replied as he grabbed Ryan by the elbow. “That is all that matters.”

Two minutes later, the boy found himself being hurried through the corridors of the Black Lodge. Other vampires, curious as to what a human child was doing in their midst, stuck their heads out of various doors, only to flinch and quickly withdraw upon catching sight of the silver talisman around his neck. At last they came to a room where a vampire dressed like the man on the dollar bill sat on a big golden chair. Seated at the vampire’s feet was a human boy who bore a strong physical resemblance to Tristan and Ethan, dressed in only a pair of silk pajama bottoms.

The ancient Noble smiled and held out an elegantly manicured hand. “Welcome, small one. I am Sinjon, Lord of Deadtown. I believe you have something for me—?”

Chapter Fourteen

“I don’t like this,” Obeah mumbled from the back seat of the Batmobile. “Much as I hate that bitch Decima, we need her for back-up.” He glanced over at Nikola, who was seated between him and the driver’s-side door, gazing at her own reflection in the heavily tinted window. She gave no sign of having heard him.

“Esher said he’d have an escort waiting for us at the House. It’ll be cool, man. Don’t sweat your balls,” Webb laughed. He was sitting up front with the driver, literally riding shotgun.

“Sweatin’ my balls is what’s kept ’em on me all this time,” Obeah snapped in reply. “Who’s waitin’ on us at the House?”

“The new chick. The one with the shades.”

“Fuck!” Obeah spat in disgust. “She’s even spookier than Decima!”

Webb turned around to grin at his friend. “Whatchoo talkin’ bout? Hey, I’d fuck her! The bitch is fine!”

“Yeah, if you like dead meat.”

“Shit! Pussy’s pussy, whether it’s body temperature or not!” Webb laughed. He was still laughing as a hand punched through the front passenger-side window and grabbed him by the collar, yanking him out of the moving car.

The driver swore and grabbed for the Glock resting on the dashboard, but before his fingers closed on the gun, something cold and sharp touched his throat. A spurt of blood sprayed from his jugular, turning the Batmobile’s windshield bright red.

Nikola turned to look at Obeah, who was frantically trying to climb into the front seat and grab the steering wheel. The Batmobile bounced over the curb and headed straight for a brick wall. At least it looked like a brick wall. It was hard to tell with all the blood coating the windshield.

There was a loud crash as the vintage Caddy smashed into a fire hydrant, sending Obeah hurtling through the windshield, bouncing off the hood like it was a trampoline. Nikola was thrown against the back of the front seat hard enough to bruise her shoulder, but was otherwise unhurt. She sat on the floor of the car, listening to the radiator hiss and the motor tick. She did not move as the passenger door was wrenched off its hinge and tossed aside. She saw a female vampire dressed in a black leather jacket and automatically cringed, assuming it was Decima.

“Are you okay?”

Nikola frowned in confusion. Decima could have cared less if she was hurt or not. Whoever the vampire in the black leather jacket and sunglasses was, it wasn’t Lord Esher’s lieutenant.

“Can you hear me?” Nikola nodded.

The strange vampire muttered a curse under her breath as she grabbed the dancer’s wrist and pulled her out of the demolished car. Nikola gazed placidly at the sight of Obeah sprawled in the street, his matted hair full of busted safety glass. Although there was blood coating his face and clothes, the bokor was still breathing. Webb, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky, his skull having split open on the nearby curb, his brains oozing through the cracks in his spiderweb tattoo like toothpaste squeezed from the middle of the tube.

“Bonk-bonk on the head,” Nikola giggled.

The female vampire hustled her into a nearby alley, then took her by the shoulders and turned her so they were face-to-face. She removed her sunglasses, exposing eyes the color of fresh blood.

“Nikola, listen to me.” The dancer twitched and blinked, but did not pull away.

“Tell me where it is.”

“Where what is?” Nikola whispered, her voice as tiny as a child’s. “The drugs Esher stole from the Borges.” “In his room.”

“Where?”

“In the Chinese box.”

“Good girl.” She pressed her index finger against the back of the dancer’s neck. “Go to sleep.” As Nikola collapsed into her arms like a sack of wet laundry, Sonja quickly tossed her over a leather-clad shoulder.

She didn’t have any choice but to drop back into overdrive, although she was uncertain how it might affect her traveling companion, given that ghostwalking was physically stressful even for vampires. Sonja took a deep breath and centered herself the best she could before taking a step sidewise in time and space. To the naked eye, it would appear as if she’d simply winked out of existence, but in reality she was still there, but only registered as a flicker of darkness at the edge of human perception.

She darted down alleyways and jogged down side streets, remaining in overdrive until she reached the entrance to the Black Lodge, where she reappeared in front of a startled Black Spoon guard.

“Sinjon is expecting me,” she said brusquely, pushing past the gang member before he could bring his AK47 to bear.

She found the Noble in his private chambers, watching Ryan gulp down chocolate milk and Hostess Sno-Balls with the morbid fascination usually reserved for those watching boa constrictors feed on live rats. Johan, Sinjon’s current favorite, was seated on an ottoman in the corner, looking sulky as Sonja dropped her burden onto a nearby couch.

Ryan shot to his feet, spilling chocolate milk on the eighteenth-century Persian rug. “Mama!” the boy cried out in a mixture of excitement and relief as he shot across the room, burying his face in his mother’s lap, smearing chocolate and creamy filling on her white satin dress.

Nikola blinked, as if emerging from a dream, and looked down at the boy clinging to her. She reached out with a trembling hand and lightly touched the crown of his head, smoothing the prematurely gray hair they both shared. “Ryan?” she whispered uncertainly. “Your name is Ryan. Isn’t it?” She turned and looked to Sonja, as if seeking confirmation.

“Of course you know Ryan, Nikola,” she said gently. “He’s your son.”

“My… son?” A flicker of confusion crossed the dancer’s face, to be quickly replaced by a smile.

“You are proving quite an ally, my dear,” Sinjon said as he drew Sonja aside. “First you alert me to Esher’s double-cross, now you deliver his little lap-dancer to me! If only you could recover the drugs as well?”

“No can do. He’s got the drugs on him,” she lied. “He’s taking them to his meeting with the Borges Brothers as a sign of good faith. He’s going to claim he stole them from one of your flunkies.”

“Damn his eyes!” Sinjon spat.

“Looks to me there’s only one way you can clear your good name—and that’s to break up his little soiree with the Brothers Borges. Do you know the restaurant they’re meeting at?”

“Intimately.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

“What about you, my dear?” Sinjon asked. “Are you interested in coming with us?”

“If it’s all the same to you, milord, I think it is best I not be seen in your company right now. Should things not work out as planned, you’ll still need someone on the inside.”

“What about them?” Johan asked, pointing at Ryan and Nikola.

“They are to remain under my protection!” Sinjon announced as he picked up his walking stick. “The woman is an ideal bargaining chip.”

Two decade ago, the neighborhood just beyond Deadtown consisted of nothing but crumbling warehouses, greasy spoons, and missions. Then, ten years ago, a bunch of real estate developers bought up everything and renovated the drafty, vermin-ridden buildings into “artist lofts” no artist could afford. The greasy spoons were replaced by chi-chi eateries specializing in nouvelle cuisine, southwestern cooking, and sushi, while the missions were closed and boutiques and overpriced retro knick-knack shops popped up in their place like urban mushrooms.

The restaurant that served as a front for the Borges Brothers boasted a general dining room and bar downstairs, while its upstairs was reserved for large dinner groups and special occasions, such as wedding receptions, birthday parties—and meetings between drug kingpins and vampire lords.

The room was tastefully appointed in sea-foam green and off-white, with three French windows that opened onto a widow’s walk balcony that, weather permitting, allowed guests a view of the city lights reflected in the nearby bay. But tonight the curtains were drawn tight and heavily armed men in cheap suits stood beside the windows. The service stairs that led to the kitchen below were also heavily guarded.

The Borges Brothers sat at one end of a long table, flanked by several armed men. The senior of the two remaining siblings, and nominal leader, was Antonio, a squat man with graying temples and a long ponytail that hung down the back of his Armani suit. Seated on his right hand was his younger brother, Lucio, who wore his hair full of gel and whose sartorial tastes leaned more to Ed Hardy fashion wear. Seated at the opposite end was Esher, accompanied by Decima, as well as four trusted members of his brood and a half-dozen Pointers.

“I am honored that you have agreed to meet with us, Lord Esher,” Antonio Borges said.

“My condolences on the untimely death of your brother, Senõrs,” he said, careful to smile without showing his teeth

“Dario was not just our brother,” Antonio said sadly, “he was an integral part of our business. But then, you know more than most the value of blood. That is why we have traveled here from Miami to make this proposal.”

“Yes, that I do,” Esher agreed. “What is it you would propose, Senõr Borges?”

“An alliance between your brood and our family,” Antonio replied. “We need you to help us destroy Sinjon.”

Esher stroked his chin for a moment, then leaned over and whispered something to Decima, who scowled and shook her head. Esher nodded and returned his attention to Borges. “I see. And what would I get out of the deal?”

“The death of our mutual enemy,” Lucio Borges said, his eyes gleaming with barely-restrained rage.

Esher laughed, making sure the drug dealers saw his fangs. “If that was enough motivation for me to act against the Freemason, he would have been dead years ago! No, Senõrs—you know my kind do not work to the advantage of humans unless it benefits us in some way. Come, amigos, what do you have that might entice one such as I?”

“We’ll supply you with all the cocaine you want. You’ll be twice as rich as Sinjon within a month.”

Esher’s smile widened and grew even sharper. “My, that is enticing. You have yourself a deal, amigos. However, there are a few, um, formalities that must first be observed between us.” Esher produced a folded piece of parchment and an old-fashioned fountain pen from his breast pocket. The nib gleamed like the edge of a razor.

“Formalities?” The elder Borges brother echoed, raising his eyebrow.

“I prefer to get things down in writing,” the vampire lord explained.

Antonio exchanged a frown with his younger brother. “You expect us to sign a contract?”

“I prefer to call it a pact,” Esher said as he walked the length of the table to where the Borges Brothers sat. He unfolded the parchment and handed it to the elder of the two. Antonio picked up the blank sheet and muttered something in Spanish to Lucio, who fidgeted nervously.

“This isn’t paper,” Antonio said, struggling to conceal his revulsion.

“Ah! I appreciate a man who can identify human skin when he feels it!” Esher smiled at his new partners.

After exchanging glances with his brother, Antonio reached out to take the proffered pen. Moving with the speed of a cobra, Esher abruptly rammed the nib into the ball of the Borges’ thumb, drawing blood. The druglord yanked his hand back.

“Madre de Dios!” Antonio cursed. “What are you playing at, you crazy bastard!?!”

“I play at nothing, Senõr!” Esher replied sternly. “If you want my help against Sinjon, then you must do as I say—sign your name in your own blood on this parchment. If you decide not to do so, well, Heaven help you. Because I know where Sinjon’s help will be coming from.”

The look on the faces of the Borges Brothers was that of men who have seen their damnation and know that salvation is no longer an option. With a trembling hand, Antonio took the pen from Esher and signed his name at the bottom of the blank sheet of human parchment, then handed it to Lucio, who pricked his own thumb and added his signature next to his brother’s.

“Excellent!” Esher smiled. As he moved to fold the document and return it to his breast pocket, the French windows flew open, and Sinjon strolled into the room, in all his foppish glory, accompanied by several vampires and a dozen or more armed Black Spoons.

“Good evening, one and all!” the vampire lord said cheerily. “It looks like someone forgot to send me an invitation to this little soiree. I hope you don’t mind if I gate-crash?”

The Black Spoons promptly pointed their guns at the Pointers and Borges’ muscle, while the Pointers trained their weapons on the Black Spoons, and the Borges’ men, uncertain as to who to trust, attempted to cover everyone.

“You miserable bloodsucking freak!” Lucio bellowed at Esher, pushing himself away from the table as he pulled a chrome-plated .38 from under his shirt. “You set us up! Nobody sets up the Borges Brothers! Nobody!”

The younger Borges fired point-blank at Esher, but the vampire turned into a dark blur, reappearing at the other end of the table. However, the bullet intended for the vampire did not go entirely to waste, as it plowed into a waiter who had just stepped out of the service stairwell bearing a tray of coffee sent up by the management. The hapless employee hit the ground in a crash of crockery, his blood mingling with the scalding hot liquid.

“You dare open fire on me?” Esher’s eyes flashed in outrage. “I had nothing to do with this!”

“You better fuckin’ believe I’ll shoot you!” Lucio retorted. “I ain’t scared of you, cocksucker!”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought,” the vampire snarled. “Your bullets are nothing to me.”

“Is that so?” Lucio grinned. “You think we humans are so stupid that we’d fuck around with monsters like you and not cover our ass? I’m packing silver, bitch!”

“Very well,” Esher said, crumpling the parchment he was holding into a ball, “our deal is off!”

Lucio cried out in agony as his gun dropped from his hand, his eyes starting from their sockets. A second later Antonio cried out as well and clutched at his chest. Lucio dropped to his knees as if felled by an axe, blood drooling from the corners of his mouth, then pitched forward onto the floor. Within moments his elder brother followed suit, crimson leaking from his nostrils, ears, and tear ducts. Upon the sight of their employers keeling over, the Borges’ men opened fire.

Roaring his anger, Esher overturned the table, pinning one of the druglords’ lieutenants underneath. The air suddenly seemed to grow tight, like the skin of a soap bubble before it bursts, and one by one the vampires disappeared, leaving only the human gang members. The Pointers and Black Spoons drew closer to one another, making sure their backs weren’t exposed, while the druglords’ men blinked and looked around in confused. Suddenly one of them screamed in pain as his arm was broken by unseen hands, and a second one’s head came detached from his body and bounced across the floor. Within seconds, all the Borges Brothers’ men were as dead as their bosses, their carcasses scattered about like those of chickens after a fox raids the coop.

Suddenly Decima winked back into view, framed against one of the French windows. The female vampire had the youth Johan in a chokehold, the point of a crossbow bolt pressed under the boy’s chin.

“Show yourself, Sinjon!” she shouted at the shimmering air. “I have your catamite!”

Sinjon appeared out of nowhere, his powdered wig askew and his waistcoat stained with blood. The Noble lifted his hand in signal, and the other members of his group popped back into view.

“I did as you asked,” he growled. “Now let him go.” He took a step toward Johan, but Decima shook her head and tightened her grip on her captive.

“Stay put, old man,” she warned, “or I’ll spear his brain like an olive!”

A second later Esher’s forces reappeared on the battlefield. While Esher was unharmed, the same could not be said for his recruits, most of whom were relatively untried. Sinjon’s brood were far more seasoned fighters, and their experience showed in the damage they had managed to inflict.

“Good work, Decima,” Esher said. “I knew I could rely on you!” “Let him go!” Sinjon snarled. “He’s of no use to you!”

“On the contrary,” Esher replied. “He makes a wonderful human shield! Order your brood to stand down, or I’ll have Decima do something decidedly unpleasant to your little boy-toy!”

“You heard him!” Sinjon barked at his troops. “Stand down!”

The remaining Black Spoons and vampires exchanged uncertain looks, and then lowered their weapons as Decima dragged Johan past Sinjon, pausing to allow the Noble one last look at his lover’s face.

“Don’t you dare hurt the boy!” the vampire lord warned, turning to face Esher. “Or you’ll be sorry, warlock! Mark my words.”

“How so, old man?” Esher sneered.

“Why don’t you go home and ask your precious little dancer?” Sinjon replied.

Esher’s triumphant smile disappeared as if wiped off with a rag.

The sound of rapidly approaching sirens spurred both vampire lords to hiss in unpleasant surprise. They had grown used to Deadtown, and were unaccustomed to the city’s authorities meddling in their affairs. Moments later, the police came thundering up the stairs, followed closely by EMTs. They found over a dozen dead bodies, some of them bullet-riddled, others pulled apart like fresh bread. And, to make matters even more confusing, some of the dead appeared to be withering and collapsing into themselves, like pumpkins rotting on the vine. The first responders muttered amongst themselves, and some of the older hands glanced about warily. If anyone noticed the shadows flickering at the corners of their eyes, they did not mention it.

Chapter Fifteen

Sonja lurched uncertainly along the topsy-turvy corridors of Esher’s stronghold. It was difficult enough navigating the House while Esher was in residence; when he was away it was as close to madness as she wished to tread. All the doors seemed familiar and strange at the same time, mocking her sense of direction. Some of them she had opened revealed empty rooms, while others seemed tied to a menacing void. Those were the doors she wasted no time slamming shut. Who knows what lurks in the corners of a house where space has been folded in on itself like a child’s paper hat?

If the vampire lord had not fallen victim to Sinjon’s forces, he would be back any time now. If he found her searching his private chambers, then it was all over; she’d be forced to duke it out not only with the Noble but his entire brood as well. Although she was willing to take risks, she wasn’t suicidal.

She tried yet another doorknob, expecting it to open onto blank nothingness, only to find herself peering into Esher’s private chamber. The suite of rooms was spacious and decorated similarly to the audience chamber, with tapestries draping the walls and candelabra the only source of light. A bewildering hodgepodge of antique furniture, from Late Renaissance to Jugendendstil, cluttered the bed-sitting room. Finding the Chinese Box was going to be considerably more difficult than she originally imagined.

After several minutes’ search, she finally found it tucked inside an alcove, hidden behind a curtain of multicolored glass beads. It was a black lacquer chest shaped like a pagoda, with bronze feet and a grinning dragon’s head decorating the uppermost rooftop. Lifting the lid, she saw two five-pound bags of Jack Frost brand sugar. Esher had certainly wasted no time in repackaging the stolen drugs.

She quickly stashed the purloined cocaine in special pouches sewn into the lining of her jacket. She’d done her fair share of smuggling over the years, although the contraband she normally dealt in was far more esoteric than mere narcotics. When dealing with demons and other unsavory paranormal elements, the body parts of convicted murderers and similar dark totems were far more valuable than money.

After making sure the packages were secure, she pulled a lace handkerchief from her pocket. The hanky was unremarkable, save for its distinctive perfume and the Masonic emblem embroidered at its corner. How careless of Sinjon to leave such personal items lying about the Black Lodge. With a smirk, she dropped it inside the Chinese box and closed the lid. Now all she had to do was hurry back to the audience chamber and await Esher’s return. Something told her he wasn’t going to be in the best of moods when he got home.

The doors to the audience chamber flew open, slamming against the walls hard enough to make the very building quake.

“Where is she?!?” Esher thundered. “Where is my Nikola?!?”

“She’s gone, milord,” Sonja replied as she hurried to greet him.

Esher’s right hand moved faster than the human eye could track, clamping tight as a vise around her throat. Her body went rigid as she battled an overpowering urge to plunge her silver switchblade into the vampire lord’s heart. While physically attacking him might prove personally satisfying, it was far from wise. She was locked into an elaborate quadrille with both Esher and Sinjon, and deviating by a single step could prove disastrous, not only to herself but Ryan and his mother.

Despite this knowledge, she could still feel the Other stir, deep at the bottom of her brain, responding to Esher’s aggression like a hibernating serpent experiencing the first signs of warm weather. The last thing she needed was to have her vampiric personality become ascendant, ruining all her plans with its outbursts of psychotic rage. She reminded herself that she would have Esher’s blood soon enough—she just had to be patient.

“I can’t tell you what happened if you snap my neck!” she gasped as she pried Esher’s fingers from about her throat. She staggered backward, massaging her larynx. “Don’t ever touch me like that again,” she said, her voice as black and sharp as volcanic glass.

“Are you threatening me?” Esher growled. “I’m just telling how it’s going to be.”

The Noble’s lip curled in derision, revealing a glimpse of fang. “You’ll do well to keep a civil tongue in your head, if you don’t want it yanked out by its roots. Now tell me what happened to Nikola.”

“Sinjon has her.”

“How did that happen?!?” Esher exclaimed angrily.

“I did as I was told: I waited outside on the curb for the Batmobile to arrive. When it didn’t show, I went looking for it. I found it wrecked, a few blocks away. The driver and Webb were dead. Obeah was alive, although badly injured. I brought him back here. Nikola was nowhere to be found.”

“Is Obeah conscious?”

“Yes. The Pointers are looking after his wounds.”

Esher strode up the stairs of the dais that lead to his chair of office. “Bring him to me.”

“As you command, milord.”

A few minutes later Obeah arrived in the audience chamber, hobbling about with the help of a makeshift cane made from a length of rebar. His broad, dark face was crisscrossed with red welts, and shards of busted safety glass still glinted in his thick dreads. His nose was broken and his left eye was swollen shut, but aside from that he was in surprisingly good shape for a man who’d gone through a windshield and bounced off the hood of a car.

“You have failed me, bokor,” Esher said grimly.

“It’s not my fault, milord!” Obeah explained. “Lady Decima wasn’t there to guard us against vampire attack. Whatever moved on us wasn’t human! The first moment I realize something is wrong is when Webb was yanked right out of the fuckin’ window like we was standing still! Then they go for the driver. I’m in the back seat with Nikola, right? So I try to grab the wheel, but it’s no good. Next thing I know, I’m flyin’ through the windshield! I wake up with busted glass in my hair, my face, even in my fuckin’ mouth! This mirror-eyed bitch here, she’s shaking me, yellin’ at me where the hell Nikola is. I told her Sinjon snatched her.”

“Are you certain it was Sinjon’s brood?”

“All I know is one minute I’m riding in the back seat, next minute I’m bouncin’ off the hood of the fuckin’ car! But who else could it be?”

Esher motioned for the former Tonton Macoute to step forward. Although his eyes were bright with fear, Obeah did so. Esher leaned forward, resting his hand atop Obeah’s, his voice soft, almost sad. “Regardless of your excuses, which, I grant, are valid, you have still failed me, Obeah. And those who fail me must suffer for their mistakes. It is a matter of discipline—do you see what I mean?”

“Y-yes, milord,” he whispered.

“I’m glad we understand one another,” Esher said, with a small smile, as he snatched the length of rebar from Obeah’s hand and swung it at his kneecap. The witchdoctor shrieked in pain and collapsed to the floor, clutching his shattered leg. Esher snapped his fingers and a pair of Pointers stepped forward and lifted him by his armpits and dragged him from the audience chamber. “See that he’s tended to,” Esher called after them. “Give him some oxycontin to shut him up. But not too much and not too soon!” He resumed his seat, his features set into a fierce scowl. “Sinjon is not as senile as I thought. Turns out he got wind of my meeting with the Borges Brothers.”

“Yeah, how’d that turn out for you?” Sonja asked, feigning ignorance.

“It was a bloodbath,” he replied darkly. “And not the good kind. Sinjon crashed the party and now the Borges Brothers are dead, along with my most trusted followers. Now I return to find that he’s stolen my bride while my back was turned! I underestimated the Freemason—but he is not as clever as he would think; he made the mistake of taking his catamite along with him to the restaurant.”

“He did what—?” Sonja gasped. There was no need to feign surprise this time.

“If the old reptile wants to take a trophy, so be it; two can play that game.” Esher clapped his hands and Decima entered the room dragging the youth called Johan behind her on a leather leash attached to a spiked dog collar, his hands secured behind his back by a pair of hinged wristcuffs. The teen’s eyes widened upon seeing Sonja, but luckily, for both of them, a rubber ball-gag filled his mouth.

“I want you to take a message to Sinjon,” Esher said, pointing to Sonja.

“Why me?” she asked in surprise.

“Sinjon does not like or trust Decima. You, on the other hand, are a tabula rasa as far as he’s concerned. He has no reason to doubt what you say. Tell Sinjon I will exchange my trophy for his in an hour’s time on The Street With No Name. No tricks. If he fails to show up—or if I see any weapons—I will send his boy-toy back to him as a jigsaw puzzle.”

Sonja nodded, trying to keep her own frustration under wraps. This was screwing up things hard. She had planned to smuggle Nikola and Ryan out of Deadtown come dawn, but now all that was being shot down in flames. And, if she didn’t move fast, Johan would eventually spill the beans about her clandestine involvement with his master.

“Consider the message as good as delivered, milord.”

She found Sinjon pacing back and forth in his drawing room, hands clutched behind his back. He glowered at her as she entered the drawing room, his eyes flashing like polished rubies. “Esher has Johan!”

“I know. I saw him.”

The vampire lord halted his pacing, a look of anxious dread crossing his face. “Has he been harmed?”

“He’s okay. But that might not last. Esher sent me here to arrange a trophy swap.”

“He doesn’t suspect anything between us, does he?” Sinjon asked uneasily.

“I don’t think so.” “What are his terms?”

“It’s to be an hour from now, on The Street With No Name. No weapons. No funny stuff. Johan for Nikola. By the way—where is she?”

“Don’t worry: she’s being kept in the style to which she is accustomed,” Sinjon replied. “As for the boy, the little guttersnipe was returned to the street. My brood found his presence…discomforting. Tell Esher I agree to his terms. I will bring him back his dancer.”

“But you promised me the girl,” Sonja reminded him.

The Noble dropped into a nearby Rococo chair, crossing his legs at the knee as he plucked a perfumed lace hanky from his sleeve and daubed his upper lip. “So I did. But that was before Johan was stolen from me. I’m sorry, but you can’t have her.”

“Is Johan that important to you?”

“There is nothing more important to a Noble than their bride-to-be,” Sinjon replied. “You should know that.”

The Street With No Name was jammed. Pointers and Spoons lined the sidewalks outside their respective headquarters, flashing gang sign amongst themselves while directing poisonous looks at their rivals, each side trying to look as tough as possible. Suddenly the doors of Dance Macabre and Rackham’s simultaneously opened. Sinjon, resplendent in his powdered wig and diamond-encrusted shoe buckles, stepped out of the pool hall while Esher, outfitted in his black leather duster, strode from the strip club, while the assembled gang members turned to their respective leaders, like daisies following the sun. Esher and Sinjon moved forward, until they stood toe-to-toe in the middle of the street.

“I believe you have something of mine you would like to return,” Sinjon sniffed.

“Put up or shut up, Freemason,” Esher growled.

Sinjon pulled the lace handkerchief from his coat sleeve and patted his upper lip. This was the signal for Tristan to step out of Rackham’s, leading Nikola on a stainless-steel choke chain.

“Satisfied, warlock? I’ve shown you yours, now show me mine.”

Esher snapped his fingers and the red vinyl door to the strip club swung open and Johan emerged, still gagged and bound as before. Decima stood behind the human youth, her crossbow pointed at his back.

“Very well,” Sinjon said, nodding in approval. “Let the exchange begin.”

“I warn you,” Esher said, pointing in the direction of the assembled Black Spoons, “if I see so much as a toothpick, Decima will spear your precious boy-toy’s heart like a ripe olive!”

“And let me remind you, Esher: if your Pointers try anything, Tristan here is under orders to garrote your beloved little ballerina. It will only take one tug on the leash to snap her neck.”

“I believe we understand each other,” Esher replied stonily.

He motioned to his lieutenant, who gave Johan a sharp nudge with her crossbow. The terrified youth took a hesitant step forward. Sinjon nodded to Tristan, who moved forward, Nikola trailing after him like a lovely, sad-eyed hound. Just as the hostages were within inches of the exchange point, there came a commotion from Sinjon’s side of the street.

“Mama!”

Ryan, his face streaked with tears, darted through the crowd like a broken field runner and headed for Nikola.

“My baby!” the dancer cried.

The boy threw himself at his mother, wrapping his thin arms about her waist and burying his head in her midriff. Nikola tried to bend down to embrace him, but was brought short by the choke collar about her throat.

“Get rid of that child, once and for all!” Esher barked in annoyance.

Decima pushed Johan out of the way and grabbed Ryan by his shirt collar, lifting the kicking boy off the ground and holding him at arm’s length as if he were a lice-ridden wolf cub.

“Let him go!” Nikola wailed, trying to snatch Ryan away from the vampire. “Don’t you dare hurt my baby!”

“Shut up, cow!” Decima snapped, swatting the dancer with her crossbow.

Nikola staggered backward, struggling to keep her footing and avoid strangling herself.

“Don’t you hurt my mother!” Ryan shrieked in impotent rage.

“Or you’ll do what, kid?” Decima smirked, saliva dripping from her fangs.

Ryan grabbed the thorny crucifix Sonja had given him and, with a strength born of fear and desperation, snapped it free of his neck with a single yank and shoved it in the face of his tormentor.

The female vampire screamed as the silver burned her flesh and dropped both boy and crossbow to cover her wounded face. Ryan hit the ground running, doing his best to dodge the fists and boots aimed at him. He was fast and made a small target, but there were just too many of them. A heavyset Pointer grabbed the boy by the belt-loops and held him aloft by one ankle, displaying him like a champion-weight fish.

“I got ’im! I got ’im!” the Pointer grinned triumphantly. “I got—!” The Pointer’s head disappeared in a spray of blood, brains and bone as his body dropped to the ground.

“Leave the boy be!” Eddie shouted, the smoke rising from the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun. Ryan quickly got his feet and scuttled towards his savior. “Any of you bastards try to lay a hand on him, you gotta go through me!”

“You’re a fool, old man!” Esher laughed. “I can take that shotgun away from you and shove it up your ass before you could bat an eye!”

“Why don’t you try it then, sucker?”

Before Esher could make good on his threat, a leather-clad arm snaked around the old hippie’s neck, placing him in a chokehold. Eddie cried out in surprise, the shotgun discharging into the air as he was yanked off balance. Ryan yelled his friend’s name, only to be snatched up as well.

“Good work,” Esher smiled at his recruit. “Be a pet and destroy them for me.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Sonja grinned as she dragged the struggling humans away into the shadows.

“Ryan!” Nikola screamed, yanking against the choke chain hard enough to turn her lips blue.

“Obeah!” Esher snapped. “Take care of her, will you?”

The bokor limped forward, his damaged leg strapped into a temporary splint, and produced a mojo bag from one of his pockets. He poured the contents of the leather pouch into his cupped palm, blowing the fine powder into Nikola’s face. The dancer coughed violently, then went limp. Esher caught his errant bride and lifted her in his arms so the choke chain would not garrote her. Nikola moaned as her head lolled back, her eyelids fluttering as the zombie dust took hold of her once more. As Sinjon turned to leave, Tristan stepped forward, holding the still-bound and gagged Johan’s leash. “Should I free him, sire?”

The vampire lord eyed the trembling youth and smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. “Leave him like that for the time being. That’s what he gets for letting himself be captured.”

“What the hell did you two think you were doing” Sonja hissed once they got clear of the crowd. “I’d expect something like this from Ryan—he’s just a kid—but you, Eddie? Shit, you know better than to pull a bonehead play like that!”

“I was just trying to look after the boy. He told me he was going to try and see his mama. I couldn’t let him go out alone.”

Sonja checked to make sure they weren’t being watched, then reached into the hidden pockets sewn within her jacket and pulled out the bags of “sugar” she had liberated from Esher’s room. She handed the parcels, plus a folded piece of paper and a hundred-dollar bill, to Eddie.

“There’s not much time! Things are coming down fast. I need you to take this with you back to your crib.”

“No prob. What is it?”

“Uncut cocaine.” “Holy shit! Are you nuts?”

“Stash it the attic with my things. Something will be by for it later.”

“You mean someone,” he corrected.

“No I don’t,” she replied. “I also need you to contact the number on this piece of paper. Everything you need to know is already written down. You’ll have to pick the order up yourself. The dead president should cover that, plus your cab ride. Take Ryan with you—I don’t want him getting loose again! Remember—you and he are supposed to be dead! Now beat it! I gotta get back or they’ll get suspicious.”

“What about my mom?” Ryan asked, catching Sonja’s sleeve as she turned to leave. “Can you save her?”

Sonja smiled and smoothed the boy’s hair. “I’ll do the best I can. But you have to do as I say and go with Eddie, understand? Now scat! I’ve business to attend to!”

She watched as Eddie took Ryan’s hand and the two hurried down the alley in the direction of their squat. The wheels were turning and there was no going back. Hopefully she wouldn’t get crushed by the juggernaut she was setting in motion. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time that happened.

Chapter Sixteen

The payphone had seen better days. It stood outside the liquor store, the only remaining legitimate business on The Street With No Name. Even if cellulars hadn’t rendered it obsolete, no one in their right mind would ever think of dropping a quarter in it, since the jimmied coin box hung open like the drawbridge on a ransacked castle. The metal shell was covered with gang tags, and the earpiece looked like it had been used as a blunt instrument more than once.

Sonja picked up the dead phone and stabbed at the keypad. There was a sound in the receiver like the wailing of lost souls, and then a gruff male voice spoke up on the other end of the line: “Monastery Bar and Grill.”

“Hey, Grendel. It’s me. Put Malfeis on, would ya?”

The bartender grumbled something in Old English as he handed over the phone. A second later his voice was replaced by that of young man’s. “Sonja! Girlchick! How’s it hangin’?”

“I can’t waste time with snappy patter right now, Mal,” she told the demon. “I have a deal for you.”

The young, clear-as-a-bell voice became as thick and gravelly as a chainsmoker’s. “When is it not business with you, girly-girl? I didn’t think you called just to shoot the breeze. What are you selling?”

“Five kilos of snow. Uncut.”

“My-my,” the demon chortled. “Slumming, are we? To tell you the truth, I thought you’d have something far more esoteric, lovey. That dust from the World Trade Center bombing was primo, by the way!”

“What if I told you this particular shipment of cocaine is responsible for at least a dozen violent deaths?”

“Hmmm. Now you’re starting to interest me.” No doubt his ears had literally pricked at that bit of news. His voice changed again, becoming that of an elderly man. “How much do you want?”

“Three hundred. And I need it in cash, no later than tomorrow morning.”

“Very well. I’ll send Grendel,” Malfeis said. Sonja had no trouble picturing him as lounged about in the back booth of his French Quarter dive, his tail lashing back and forth like an anxious cat’s.

“You got me on radar?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? My kind developed Caller ID! However, I will need an exact address for my delivery boy.”

“Okay. But remember: no eating anyone this time!” “If you insist,” Malfeis sighed.

After finishing her deal with the devil, as Sonja hung up the receiver, she experienced a peculiar sensation, persistent and impossible to ignore, like the tug of a magnet. It was Esher, calling to those tied to him by blood.

The Dance Macabre was jammed with humans and vampires alike. She knew Esher had been building his brood, but until that moment Sonja did not realize just how large it truly was. She’d never seen so many vampires together under the same roof. Esher’s brood reminded her of a cross between Fagin’s School for Thieves and the Manson Family, combining a ragged army of sneak-thieves and footpads with damaged souls drawn to, and easily manipulated by, a far more powerful, utterly amoral will than their own. The sight of them made her palms twitch, and she had to restrain herself for reaching for her switchblade.

Most of the brood was comprised of younger, orphaned vampires Esher had actively recruited. Of course, ‘young’ had a different meaning among the undead than it did the living. While some wore the skins of runaway teenagers, others were outfitted in the bodies of decrepit street-people. She suspected most of them had been undead for no longer than a year or two. For the most part they had all been created by careless predation, probably by vampires no different from themselves, and left to wander the urban jungle alone and untutored, much like she had been, decades ago.

As she moved through the crowded nightclub, she noticed that the Pointers were huddled together in one section of the room, eyeing the assembled vampires uneasily. Sonja picked up on a definite lions-at-the-watering-hole vibe as the assembled vampires squabbled over the available feeders chained to the walls.

She watched as two undead—one wearing the skin of a junior executive, the other a street hustler—got into a hissing match over a tall, thin man whose who was so pale his veins resembled strands of blue yarn. There was very little juice left in him, and the vampires knew it, hence the showdown. The junior executive’s hair rose like the hackles on a cat’s back, while the hustler growled like an angry mountain lion, unsheathing his fangs so far it looked as if his lips had been sliced away. The junior executive quickly backed off and the hustler claimed the feeder as his own.

Sonja quickly looked away as the winner of the hissing match drained the dying man dry. The sight and smell of the blood flowing around her was starting to make her edgy. She had not fed since arriving in Deadtown. She usually carried a couple of units of whole blood in a special cryo-container when she traveled, but she had already tapped out her supplies. When she looked back in the feeder’s direction, it was in time to see the club’s bar back unshackling the empty to replace it with a fresh vintage from the cellar.

The dance music blaring from the speakers began to fade, and the crowd turned as one to face the stage. Esher, stripped to the waist, stepped out from behind the blood-red curtains and gestured for the assembly to draw near.

“Come closer, my children.”

The vampires in the audience murmured to themselves and pressed closer to the runway, their pale faces turned toward their leader.

“I call you my children, because even though most of you were not Made by me, your blood flows through my veins. You who have no dame or sire, you who have been cast aside—I gladly claim you! You who are without a place to hide from those who would destroy you—I will protect you! A time of great tribulation is soon to be upon us, my friends! If we are to survive it, we must prove ourselves united in the face of adversity and doubt! That is why I have summoned you to my side this evening, my children—to tighten our bond even further.”

As Decima emerged from behind the curtains, carrying a ritual dagger and a golden chalice, Sonja could see that while Ryan hadn’t held the silver crucifix against the vampire’s skin long enough to kill her, he had still done some damage. The wound on her forehead was red and angry, like a fresh brand. Although she had been irked by the boy’s foolhardy stunt, she had to admit she was proud of him for marking the bitch.

Esher took the dagger from his lieutenant and pressed the point against his right wrist and sliced his inner forearm to the elbow. A liquid that looked more like burgundy than blood gouted forth from the wound. Esher must have recently gorged in order to bleed so freely. Decima knelt before her sire, holding the chalice in order to catch every drop of precious gore. Once the golden cup was filled, Esher held it up so all could see.

“Behold! As you gave to me, so do I give unto you! My blood is your blood! Come forward, my children! Come forward and drink that which is Life!”

The vampires moaned as one and pushed forward, tearing at one another in their eagerness to taste their leader’s power. But when one of them tried to jump his place in line by climbing over the footlights onto the stage, Decima kicked him in the head, sending him flying back into the crowd.

“Wait your turn, maggot-bait!” she snapped. “Try that again and I’ll put a bolt through your fuckin’ eye!”

Sonja found herself sandwiched in between what had once been a drag queen and what had once been a tourist. The tourist-vampire looked particularly fresh, as he still had a digital camera looped around his neck and that glazed, shell-shocked stare common to the newly resurrected. Sonja glanced about uneasily, but there was no way she could evade participating in the brood sabbat without drawing attention to herself. If any of the other vampires were concerned about Esher tightening his hold on them, they certainly didn’t show it, and instead shivered like junkies in anticipation of a fix.

Suddenly she found herself at the head of the line, with Esher smiling down at her as he handed her the chalice. “Drink this, my friend, so that we may be of one blood.”

Steeling herself, Sonja lifted the chalice to her lips. It tasted like the finest vintage wine and was as thick and nourishing as mother’s milk. She felt it creep through her veins, spreading a warm glow as it went. Nothing could compare to it: not sex, not food, not drink. She closed her eyes and savored the moment, tempted to lose herself in the ecstasy of it all, only to start from her reverie as Esher took the chalice from her hands and handed it to the tourist-vampire, who eagerly took her place in line. As she moved away from the stage, she could feel Esher’s blood inside her, humming to itself like a tiny dynamo.

As she joined the others on the dance floor, the door to the club flew open and a tall figure dressed in a scarlet cloak entered. The Pointers did not challenge this new arrival, assuming it to be a member of Esher’s brood. But Sonja could tell by the way he carried himself, this was no garden-variety vampire.

“Esher!” thundered the newcomer.

The vampire lord halted and peered into the crowd. “I know that voice.”

The newcomer pushed back his cowl, revealing shoulder-length honey-blond hair pulled into a loose ponytail and features so classically perfect they could have been the model for a Greek statue. “Has it been so long that you have forgotten your own sire?”

Esher frowned. “Gabor? They sent you?”

“Who else would they send? I was the one responsible for Making you, thereby the onus falls on me to reign you in.”

“Surely you jest, old friend! All I do here is for the greater glory of the Ruling Class!”

“Lie to yourself all you like, Esher! But don’t lie to me! What you’re doing is born out of lust for power. You are on the verge of open brood-war with one of the most entrenched and powerful Nobles in America. Even in Deadtown, open warfare between rival broods is bound to bring attention from humans. It was one thing to blatantly battle amongst ourselves in the old days, but with every warm-blood carrying a camera in their cell-phone and the Internet, it’s an invitation to genocide! There have also been complaints that your bloodlust for the mortal woman—the dancer called Nikola—has affected your reasoning and made you reckless.”

Esher’s eyes narrowed and his frown became an angry scowl. “I weary of your questions, Gabor! We were more than friends, once—but those nights are gone! There was a time when you were the master, and I the student, but I have gone on to claim the power you never dared to. Do not threaten me, for I will not stay my hand!”

“Is your hubris such that you would risk exposing us all for the sake of making Deadtown your own?” Gabor retorted. “The altercation at the restaurant earlier this evening did not go unnoticed, I assure you! There are those in power at the Holy See waiting for evidence of large-scale vampire activity. You may very well have given the Malleus Maleficarum its new lease on life!”

“Let the Witch Hammer strike me, if they dare!” Esher sneered.

Gabor shook his head in dismay. “I had hoped that I would be able to talk reason into you, Esher. But I see you will have none of it! Very well—I have no recourse but to take you back with me.”

“I will not be judged, Gabor! Not by you and not by the Synodus Horrenda!”

“Very well,” the blond vampire sighed as he leapt onto the runway, his movements as fast and smooth as those of a tiger, his hands glowing as if they held live coals. “Then you leave me no choice.”

The Pointers and vampires both began pushing for the exits as Esher moved toward his Maker, his fangs bared and red energy crackling from his fingertips. The warlocks lunged at one another, their hands locking onto one another’s shoulders. To the uninitiated, it looked as if they were engaged in nothing more than a vigorous bout of Indian wrestling, but the look of pain on the combatants’ faces told a different story.

The air inside Dance Macabre grew heavy and Sonja felt her skin prickle, like before a lightning strike. There was a sound like that made by an arc welder going full blast, and then a shroud of crimson energy enveloped the battling wizards. She swore and instinctively covered her eyes, even though she was still wearing her sunglasses. The smell of burning blood filled her nostrils, making her grimace in disgust. She had heard stories of the Strega—humans versed in the occult who had carried their dark power over into their undead existence—but she had never seen anything like what was transpiring on the main stage of the Dance Macabre.

As Esher and Gabor strained against one another, tears of blood leaked from the corners of their eyes and ran down their cheeks, soon followed by blood from their noses and ears.

“Stand down, Gabor!” Esher growled. “Let go, or I’ll boil your blood like a pudding in the pot!”

“Only if you agree to leave Deadtown with me!”

Esher’s response was to close his blood-filled eyes and push even harder than before. Gabor cried out as he was sent sliding the length of the runway on his back. His eyes were gone, the sockets reduced to puddles of blood that bubbled like boiling sugar. Gore poured from every hole in his head, turning his face to a crimson mask.

Esher knelt down beside his dying sire, a look of genuine regret on his face. “Why did you have come here, old friend? You should have known it would end like this. I will not be stopped by a handful of museum pieces, shivering in fear of what the cattle might do should they see us for what we are!”

Gabor made a wet gurgling sound deep in his chest that was the best he could do for a chuckle. “You blind fool. They don’t have to raise a hand to swat you down. Your doom is upon you, but you cannot see it for what it is. You nurse a serpent at your bosom, beloved.”

“What do you mean?” Esher glowered. “Are you saying there’s a traitor in my brood? Answer me, damn you!”

But Gabor was beyond all questions. As Esher watched in disgust, the dead Noble’s skin melted away, quickly followed by its exposed pink muscle and bone. Within seconds there was nothing left to mark the passing of the six-hundred-year-old Transylvanian but a pool of fetid ichor.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ESHER

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid.

—Jeremiah 2:12

Chapter Seventeen

“Eddie! Open up!” Sonja announced as she pounded on the basement door. “It’s me!”

The door opened slightly and the old hippie peered past the security chain. “Man, this is getting fuckin’ weird, even for Deadtown!” he whispered nervously as she slipped across the threshold.

“Did you do what I asked?”

“Yeah—they’re over there,” he said, pointing to a florist’s delivery box perched atop a steeple of books. “I gotta say, you’ve got some strange friends, lady. The woman who ran that freaky all-night flower shop you sent me to—if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was green under all that makeup she was wearing!”

“Yeah, Gaea’s what you might call an Earth Mother,” Sonja replied with a chuckle. “Have you seen anyone unusual go in or out of the building?”

“Yeah. That’s another piece of high weirdness!” Eddie replied, looking like he just swallowed a lemon. “This dude was heading out the front door just as me and Ryan were coming back from your errand. Big guy. Had to be seven feet tall, easy. He was wearing a bulky trench coat and porkpie hat. He looked like he was missing an arm. And he had tusks.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“No, but he gave Ryan the fish-eye. Kind of like the way a dog does a piece of steak. Fucker gave me the creeps.”

“Yeah, well, you should see his old lady. Excuse me a minute, Eddie. I need to go upstairs and check on something.”

She returned a few minutes later, carrying her gym bag. She knelt amid the jumble of books and removed several sheaves of neatly bound hundred-dollar bills, stacking them on the floor next to her. Eddie whistled in astonishment and bent to pick up one of the stacks. “I need you to stash this for me until I get back,” she said.

“No prob!” he laughed.

Sonja walked over to the florist’s box and removed the bouquet of black roses from their container. She studied the long stems for a moment, and then used her switchblade to trim them back to a more manageable length before stuffing them inside the now-empty gym bag.

“Where’s Ryan?” she asked as she entered the kitchen.

“Here I am!” the boy chirped, sticking his head out from under the sink. “You’re supposed to be asleep, buster!” Eddie chided.

“But I might miss something!” Ryan protested.

“That’s the point,” Sonja said.

Eddie frowned and tugged on his beard. “You said things were gonna be comin’ down fast.”

“The wheels are in motion, Eddie, and I’m doing my best to see that none of us are caught in the machinery, that’s all I can tell you. There’s less than an hour before the sun comes up,” she said, as she picked up the gym bag. “Look for me come the dawn.”

“And what if you don’t show up?”

“Take the money and the boy and get the hell out of Deadtown and never come back.”

Obeah sat and stared sourly at the TV set. One of the perks of being Nikola’s bodyguard was satellite TV. He particularly liked Spike and the SyFy Channel, but tonight he found it hard to focus his attention on anything but his leg. Normally he played cards with Webb when he couldn’t stand being inside his own head, but Webb was no more—his brains now decorating the street he’d spent his short life prowling. He grimaced as pain shot from his shattered kneecap. Muttering under his breath, he pulled a bottle out of his shirt pocket and popped a couple of Vicodins, hoping he could get a handle on the pain before his supply ran out. The Pointers had knocked over a pharmaceutical warehouse a week or two back, in order to replenish the supplies in the gang’s makeshift “infirmary.” Unfortunately, most of those involved in the heist were functionally illiterate, so the majority of the haul ended up being morphine sulfate suppositories. As bad as his leg felt, it wasn’t worth sticking a finger up his ass. At least not yet. Another surge of pain made him curse Esher, but not loud enough for anyone—or anything—that might be lurking in the shadow to hear.

Still, despite what Esher had done to him, he was the only man Obeah respected and feared more than Papa Doc. After all, Papa only played at being a servant of Baron Samedi, the Lord of Cemeteries. Esher was the real thing.

Although he had been in the Tonton Macoute, Obeah was not a native-born Haitian. He had been born and raised in New Orleans, the son of an illiterate dockworker and a Haitian émigré. His mother had come from Port Au Prince as a young girl, searching for the American Dream. What she found was a job as a laundress. Obeah learned of voodoo at her knee, which she practiced on the side, casting spells and making love charms for the neighbors to make ends meet. When, in 1968, Obeah received a draft notice on his eighteenth birthday, inviting him to Viet Nam, he fled to his mother’s homeland—and soon found himself embroiled in the island’s voodoo societies, which in turn led to gainful employment with Papa Doc’s secret police force.

By the time Baby Doc fled his homeland for the safety of exile in France in 1986, Obeah had long lost count of the murders, mutilations, and rapes he had participated in. On one foray he and his fellow Tonton Macoutes had stormed an opposition party meeting and hacked the arms off everyone in the house—men, women and children alike—and then piled them in the street for the neighbors to see. He remembered how he’d laughed at the sight of the fingers on some of the freshly severed limbs twitching spasmodically, as if trying to wave bye-bye. Those had been good days for him.

Now he was back in the country he’d turned his back on over forty years ago. The last twenty-five years had been rough—with Baby Doc gone, the people of Haiti he had helped to terrorize for so long were free to exact revenge, and in short order he found himself out of a job and his home burned to the ground. Fearing for his safety, Obeah returned to his native land, hidden amongst the thousands of boat people who had struggled to make it to Florida in leaky tubs cobbled together out of little more than desperation and sealing wax. He discovered that during his absence his father had been killed on the job by a dropped freight container, while his mother died of a stroke while washing other people’s clothes. Since there wasn’t much call for a death squad leader in the States, he became a professional killer, while working as a conjure man on the side to make ends meet. It wasn’t honest work, but it paid the bills.

Then, a five years ago, he met Esher. The minute the vampire walked into the botanica that served as the front for his death-for-hire business, Obeah recognized him for what he was. You don’t traffic in voodoo all your life without developing a sense for such things. Esher lost no time in telling him he was in the market for a human enforcer with occult knowledge, and Obeah came highly recommended. He signed up the vampire then and there and hadn’t looked back. Two years later he teamed up with Webb, and they ended up handling most of the dirty deeds that Esher needed done right. Then, six months ago, Esher re-assigned them as bodyguards to his new favorite.

It was a cushy job, for the most part. He and Webb spent most of their time in the safe house watching TV or playing cards or shooting the shit. It wasn’t like the bitch did anything—at least not anymore. The first few weeks she kept trying to escape, and when it became obvious she wasn’t going to be able to do that, she’d tried killing herself. That’s when Esher ordered him to start dosing her with the zombie-dust. After that, their job became even easier than before., which suited Obeah just fine. Webb, being a young man, tended to get restless and often resented the monotony. Obeah, on the other hand, was of an age where constant danger and action had lost its appeal, and was, at first, grateful for the reassignment. Esher did still send them out, now and again, on those errands he could trust no one else with, such as the business with Dario Borges.

He hoped Esher would find someone competent to replace Webb, but he doubted it. The Five Points Gang was the biggest bunch of scramble-headed fuckups he’d ever dealt with. Compared to the Tonton Macoutes, they were a bunch of snot-nosed kids in baggy pants and expensive sneakers playing at being bad.

Every now and again one of the punks would try and make his bones by messing with the Witch Doctor, as they called Obeah behind his back, to show everyone what a bad mother they really was. It always ended with the punks getting a taste of machete. If they were lucky, they would just lose a nose or an ear. The little fuckers were like a cottonmouth snake: you had to stand on their collective neck every second so they wouldn’t whip around and bite you. Most of them were too whack to be of any use except as cannon fodder. He didn’t trust any of them to wipe their own ass, much less watch his back. Webb had been more than a little nuts, but at least he had the badass to back it up.

Obeah grimaced and took a swallow from the bottle of Olde English tucked between him and the side of the chair. Things were going to shit and fast. Esher was losin’ it, big time, even though he was even more powerful now than he’d ever been before. No, juice wasn’t the problem. The problem was pussy.

Esher wasn’t thinking straight on account of that bitch Nikola. And for what? Granted, she was fine in the looks department, but it was clear now there was no way Esher was going to be able to scrub that kid out of her mind. If she responded that strongly to the boy’s presence after a steady diet of zombie dust, then she was never going to give that part of herself up.

If it was his call to make, he’d walk into that bedroom right now and pop a cap in her fuckin’ skull and get it over with. But that would be a foolish thing to do. After all, he’d signed a contract with Esher in his own blood. And he knew what happened to those who reneged on their contracts. Still, fear for his life aside, Obeah prided himself on his loyalty, and despite everything, he still held the man in awe. He had come too far to abandon his master now. Plus, truth to be told, he was too old to be anything except what he’d always been—a killer. A taste for brutality and an inborn obedience to the biggest dog with the strongest teeth had been part of him all his life. His soul was the Devil’s, part and parcel, just as his Mama said, and it was too late to try and backpedal on the deal he’d made. He was in until the end—be it his or Esher’s.

Obeah glanced over to where Webb normally sat on the sofa. There was something bothering him about the kidnapping that lead to his friend’s death, something that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Still, it nagged at his brain like a popcorn shell wedged between his teeth. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. The last he saw of Webb was the soles of his boots as he was yanked from the moving car’s window. But there was something else, wasn’t there? Something he witnessed but did not see.

He’d always been unsettled by the vampires and their ability to ghostwalk, as they called it. That was why Decima usually rode with them to and from the safe house. Although humans couldn’t see a vampire while it was ghostwalking, another vampire could sense them. That was why the only time he and Webb felt they were actual bodyguards was during the drive in the Batmobile.

But Obeah had personally spoken with the guede, the spirits of the dead, and been ridden by the loa, the god-forces of ancient Africa. A man does not undergo such experiences and remain the same as other men. The spirits leave something of themselves behind—a heightened awareness, a touch of second sight, that the bokor could call upon in times of need. He knew now that he had seen something in the moments just before and after the crash, but what?

He reached down and caressed the handle of his machete. The weapon leaned against the right side of the chair, balanced on its edge so it was within easy grasp. The handle was of finest mahogany and had been presented to him in a special ceremony by Papa Doc himself. It was Obeah’s most prized possession.

He checked his watch and frowned. It was time for him to check on the bitch. He tried to lever himself out of the easy chair with the length of rebar he was using as a staff, but the pain that shot up his leg made him cry out and drop back in his seat. Fuck it. The bitch wasn’t going anywhere.

Suddenly there came a knock on the door. Obeah grimaced. It was nearly sunrise, so whatever was on the other side probably was human. Grimacing in pain, he pulled himself out of the chair, doing his best to keep from losing his balance or blacking out. The makeshift splint did little to help his mobility. He hobbled toward the door as the pounding grew louder, his machete clutched in one hand.

“I’m coming! Keep your shirt on!” he grumbled as he put his eye to the spy-hole set in the door. He grunted in surprise. The visitor was the new vampire bitch—the one with the sunglasses. Esher rarely sent vampires to the safe house, since it was like posting bears to guard the honeycomb.

Scowling in suspicion, Obeah threw back the five deadbolts and opened the door, leaving on the two-inch-thick security chain. “Whatchoo want?” he growled

“Esher sent me. It’s an emergency!” She held up a gym bag at eye level.

“I’m supposed to give her some elixir he whipped up that’ll wipe all memory of that brat of hers from her memory. She has to receive it before the dawn.”

“How come he didn’t call me about it first?” “Your cell phone got trashed in the crash—remember?”

“Oh, yeah—that’s right,” he said, nodding his head in acknowledgement. Satisfied by her explanation, Obeah removed the chain and let Sonja into the apartment.

“Where’s Nikola?” She asked as she glanced around the front parlor and kitchen as Obeah relocked the door.

“Asleep in her bedroom,” Obeah grunted, pointing at the door at the far end of the parlor.

“They find a replacement for Webb yet?” she asked as she moved ahead of him into the apartment.

“Not yet.”

“That’s a shame. You really need a partner on a detail like this.”

There was a way her body moved as she spoke those words that triggered a memory deep within Obeah’s brain. He was back on the street, sprawled among the busted safety glass. There was blood in his face, blood in his mouth, blood in his eyes. As he lay there, balanced on the razor’s edge between conscious and unconsciousness, he looked up through a scrim of red pain—and saw something hovering over him. The impression he had, before the darkness claimed him, was that the thing looking down at him had eyes of mirrored glass.

“You! It was you!” he bellowed as he swung the machete.

Sonja was on him in less than a heartbeat, raising her left hand to block the coming blow. Growling like an angry panther, she used the gym bag to knock the length of rebar he was using as a cane out of his hand. Obeah screamed in pain as he fell to the floor, his injured leg pinned under him. Sonja planted a boot on the bokor’s throat, the heel resting on his larynx. She plucked the 9mm from his waistband and checked the clip, then slapped it back into place.

She glanced down at Obeah, who was struggling to both breathe and pray to his gods at the same time. She was tempted to drain him—it had been a long time since she’d fed—but she didn’t want to leave any evidence of a vampire being involved in the kill. It was better for Esher to think it was the handiwork of a Black Spoons hit team.

She lifted her foot from Obeah’s neck and flipped him over onto his belly with a single kick. Although the pain must have been immense, all he could manage was a despairing moan. Obeah’s years on a death squad told him what would happen next. His last thought before the bullet from his own gun entered the back of his skull was that he wished he could tell his mother he was sorry.

Having disposed of the guard, Sonja walked to the door of the bedroom. She tried the knob and found it was unlocked. “Nikola?”

No answer.

She entered cautiously. The interior of the room was utterly dark, as the windows were painted over and all the light-fixtures had been removed. Apparently Esher wanted his new bride-to-be accustomed to her forthcoming exile from the sun. The utter darkness meant nothing to her, however, since she could see as clearly as if it were high noon, even with her shades on.

Despite the darkness, the bedroom itself was decorated completely in white—white plush rugs, white curtains, white vanity table, white dresser and wardrobe. Nikola lay curled in the middle of the circular king-size bed, wrapped in white satin sheets like a butterfly in its cocoon. Sonja set her gym bag down and nudged the mound under the sheets. The lump under the covers made a noise and squirmed slightly, as if trying to crawl away, then went still. Sonja grabbed the edge of the mattress and tilted it, rolling the dancer out of the bed and onto the floor, where she lay, naked save for a white lace thong, her head lolling like a ragdoll’s.

“Time t’dance awreddddy?” Nikola moaned, peering groggily through sleep-swollen eyes.

Sonja grabbed the dancer by the wrist and dragged her to her feet. “It’s time to go! I’m busting you out of here!”

She strode to the wardrobe, pulling the drugged woman behind her like a toy on a string, and began tossing clothes onto the floor. She then opened the gym bag, removing the dozen black roses, and tossed the bouquet atop the crumpled bedclothes. She stuffed a few pieces of Nikola’s wardrobe into the empty bag, then turned to speak to the dancer—only to find her curled into a fetal position on the floor. She grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her vigorously.

“Wake up, damn it! You can do better than this! You’ve got to it you want to see Ryan again.”

“Ryan?” Nikola’s eyelids flickered and she weakly raised her head. “Is Ryan here?”

“No, but if you want to be with him, you have to do as I say. Do you want to be with your son?”

“Yesss.”

“Then prove it to me: get dressed.”

The dancer struggled to her feet. She was wobbly, but seemed far more focused than before. She pulled a one-piece white satin dress with a plunging neckline over her head, then stepped into a pair of white stiletto heels. Once Nikola was clothed, Sonja took her by the hand and led her into the parlor. Nikola blinked at the sunlight flooding the room through the windows and raised a pale hand to her face. The skin around her eyes was puffy and purplish-pink, and tears streamed down her cheeks. It was the first time she’d seen daylight in months.

Sonja steered her around Obeah’s body and toward the door. If Nikola noticed her former bodyguard’s corpse, she didn’t respond. Nor did she show any emotion upon spotting the half-dozen Pointers sprawled dead on the sidewalk and stairs outside the safe house.

“Where’s Ryan?” she asked, looking up and down the street for signs of her son.

“He’s waiting for you at a friend’s house.”

“Jesus,” Eddie whispered as he opened the door. He quickly stepped aside to allow Sonja tow Nikola into the apartment. “You actually pulled it off.”

“Mama!” Ryan squealed as he scampered out from under the kitchen sink. The boy launched himself into his mother’s arms, and it was all Nikola could do not to stagger and fall as she returned his hug.

“Eddie! This is my mom!” Ryan exclaimed excitedly as he held onto Nikola’s hand while reaching out to his friend with the other.

Eddie smiled and stepped forward. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. Ryan’s done nothing but talk about you since I met him. My name’s Edward McLeod.”

“You’re the one looking after my boy?” she asked.

“When he lets me.”

Nikola smiled then, and something of the woman she used to be glimmered in her eyes. She took the old hippie’s hand and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for taking such good care of him. How can I repay you for what you’ve done?”

“You don’t have to, ma’am,” he replied, blushing to his receding roots. “I just did what needed to be done. Karma, y’know?”

“Look, I hate to break up the happy reunion, but there’s not much time left,” Sonja said firmly. “If we’re going to smuggle you two out of Deadtown, it has to be when the vampires are down for the day and their human minions aren’t up and about. Which means we’ve only got a couple hours at the most. Where’s that money I left with you for safekeeping?”

Cloudy disappeared among the haphazard stacks of old books and returned a moment later, lugging a massive single-volume Oxford English Dictionary. He flipped open the cover to reveal a hollowed interior with the money stashed inside. “I always figured thieves would never think of looking in a book,” he grinned.

Sonja unzipped the gym bag and began stuffing the cash inside it. “I got a half-million for the cocaine I ripped off from Esher, after he ripped it off from Sinjon. I’m giving you two hundred thousand. I figure that’s enough to get you as far from Deadtown as possible and set you up in a new life. One where you won’t have to worry about where your next paycheck’s coming from for a long time and you don’t have to work at night and leave Ryan by himself. I’m giving Eddie a hundred thousand for his trouble—that okay with you, man?” she asked as she handed him a fat stack of hundred dollar bills.

“You hear me complaining?” he grinned.

“The rest I’m keeping for myself. I don’t exactly do this shit for free, y’know.” With that Sonja turned and handed the gym bag to Nikola, who stared into its contents in disbelief. She seemed stunned, but it was hard to tell if it was a reaction to her change in fortune or the zombie dust still in her system.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?” the dancer asked in a bewildered voice.

“Maybe it’s because you remind me of someone I used to know,” Sonja replied quietly. “Someone who needed help once—and there was no one there to give it.”

Nikola regarded her strange benefactor for a long moment, and then glanced at her son, smoothing his hair from his pale, wide brow. “I owe you the return of my life, my soul—and my son. May God bless you for all you’ve done.”

Sonja’s smile was thin as a paper cut. “I’m afraid that’s out of the question.”

“Jumpin’ Jesus! When did you do that?” Eddie suddenly blurted.

Sonja glanced down at her left hand and noticed for the first time that she was missing her left pinkie. She splayed her fingers, studying the wound. She had to give Obeah credit—his machete was so sharp and his slice so quick, she never even realized he’d landed a blow.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” The old hippie asked as he grimaced in sympathy.

“I have a very high pain threshold,” she replied calmly. “We don’t have the time to waste on something as minor as this,” she said with a dismissive wave of her maimed hand. “We need to get this show on the road.”

“But you’re missing a finger—!” Eddie protested.

“That’s not important. What matters, right now, is getting Nikola and Ryan out of Deadtown.” She turned to the dancer, who was still staring at the money. “Do you have a place where you can go?”

“My sister lives in San Luis Obispo,” she replied.

“Good. California it is.” Sonja turned to look at Eddie. “You should go with them. Deadtown won’t be safe for you. There’s a good chance it won’t even exist in a night or two.”

“I can’t leave,” Eddie said firmly. “This is my home. I’m too old to start over somewhere else.”

Ryan pulled away from his mother and grabbed one of Eddie’s big, callused hands. “You’re going to come live with us, aren’t you?”

Eddie smiled sadly and knelt so that he and the boy were eye-to-eye. “I’m touched that you made the offer, kid. Really I am. But I can’t go with you. But maybe someday I’ll come out and visit you and your mom—would you like that?”

Ryan threw his arms around the old hippie’s neck and hugged him as hard as a child has ever hugged a beloved toy. Eddie pulled the boy close, trying not to crush him as he returned the embrace.

“We’re running out of time,” Sonja said, her voice soft but urgent.

Eddie nodded his understanding and reluctantly stood up. “You better go, kid.” He wiped the heel of his palm under his eyes, struggling to keep smiling in front of the boy. “But before you do, there’s something I want you to have.” He turned and dipped into the jumble of books that surrounded them with the unerring grace of a heron pulling a fish from a pond, retrieving a much-thumbed copy of Make Way For Ducklings. “Something to read on the plane,” he said, handing the book to Ryan with a melancholy smile. Sniffling back his tears, the boy clutched the book to his narrow chest like a holy shield.

Sonja stood by the door, anxiously tapping her foot, until Nikola and Ryan joined her. Then, with the simple turn of a deadbolt lock, they left Eddie’s squat and were out on the street.

In the early morning light, Deadtown looked no different from any other blighted inner-city neighborhood. The vampires who ruled its streets during the night were curled up in their various underground burrows, safely hidden from the sun, while their human servants slumbered in their squalid squats, leaving the streets, at least for a few brief hours, to those who had always called Deadtown home. Most of the residents were either very old or extremely poor, if not both, like the ancient woman in the shapeless raincoat and black babushka across the street, who was pushing a decrepit two-wheeled market-cart ahead of her like a doddering Sisyphus.

Some were junkies or alcoholics, shivering in the thin daylight as they made their way to a rendezvous with their dealer or the nearest liquor store, like the rail-thin older man dressed in a filthy clerical collar standing on the street corner. As Sonja and her charges drew closer, the priest crossed himself and scurried to the other side of the street, clutching a paper sack under his arm.

As the trio hurried along, the few citizens of Deadtown they happened across reacted in much the same way; at first surprised to see a child; then, upon spotting Sonja, they quickly averted their eyes, visibly shaken by the sight of a monster in broad daylight. Not that Sonja was enjoying her little morning stroll. Although she could walk in the sunlight without fear of bursting into flame, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. She was tired and her body cried out for the regeneration that came with sleep. The bright light was giving her a migraine and her skin felt as if it was covered in an army of fleas.

The further they walked from the cancerous heart of Deadtown, the more people appeared on the street, the urban blight weakening with every passing block until, without warning, they turned a corner and found themselves on a busy downtown area, filled with bicycle messengers, honking cabs, and harried-looking men in suits and women dressed as secretaries.

Nikola shivered and turned to look back the way they’d come. “Was it always that easy to leave?” she asked.

“It’s always that easy—and nearly impossible—to escape places like Deadtown,” Sonja replied. “Come, you’re not safe yet—not until we’ve gotten you on a plane.” She stepped out into traffic and slammed her hands onto the hood of a passing taxi, bringing it to a full stop. The driver looked more spooked than angered, since he hadn’t put his foot on the brake.

“Wh-where to, lady?” the cabbie stammered as they climbed into the back seat.

Sonja scanned the bank of video screens in the main terminal until she spotted a flight into Los Angeles. She hung back and watched Nikola go to the ticket counter and talk to the booking agent. After a few minutes she came back, waving a pair of boarding passes. Although she was smiling, she still looked painfully wan, like Camille on a day-trip.

“I got first class tickets on the next flight out!”

“You can afford it now,” Sonja said with a shrug. “I need to call my sister and tell her we’re coming. Can you watch Ryan for me while I try to find a payphone? Esher took my iPhone away from me a long time ago.” Sonja waited until Nikola was safely out of earshot before dropping down onto one knee and speaking directly to the boy. “Kid, you’re going to have to look after your mom. She’s been through a lot. She’s going to need you to help her try and get back to how she used to be—and that might take a long, long time.”

“Is she gonna be okay?” Ryan asked anxiously.

“I think so,” Sonja replied with a crooked smile. “But I want you to remember, no matter what happens to you and your mom in the future, that Esher couldn’t make her stop loving you. He did everything he could to scrub away her past and make her like him—but she wouldn’t give you up. That’s what kept her human, and that’s what brought her back to you.”

“I know,” Ryan said, his voice so soft it was almost lost in the background noise of the terminal. He looked solemnly into her mirrored eyes. “Will I see you again?”

Sonja shrugged as she stood up, patting the boy on the head. “Who knows, kid? I travel a lot. Maybe someday we’ll cross paths again.”

Nikola returned, smiling even broader than before, her eyes gleaming with a manic sparkle. “I got hold of my sister. I gave her our flight information and she’ll be there to meet us at LAX! You’ve never met your Aunt Kate, have you, Ryan?”

The boy shook his head.

“She says we can live with her until we can get ourselves established. She’s got a son—your Cousin Jeremy—who’s a year older than you that you can play with. He’ll be your new friend.”

“But Eddie’s my friend,” Ryan said, glancing down at the copy of Make Way For Ducklings he held clutched to his chest.

“Well, Cousin Jeremy can be your new friend,” Nikola said, her smile suddenly brittle.

Sonja reached into her pocket and pulled out a fist full of dollars bills. “You’ve got some time to kill before the flight. Why don’t you go get yourself something to snack on, kid? Here, knock yourself out.”

Ryan tucked his book under one arm and eagerly accepted the offered money, scurrying across the concourse to the Cinnabon stand much like he had navigated the streets of Deadtown.

“He’s a wonderful kid,” Sonja said, as she watched the boy press his nose against the pastry case. “You’re very lucky, Nikola.”

“I know,” she replied quietly.

Sonja turned so that her mirrored gaze was focused directly on the dancer. She slid her sunglasses down so that Nikola had an unobscured view of her eyes. “Get this straight: I didn’t do any of this for you,” she said, her voice as hard and unyielding as tempered steel. “I did it for the kid. And if word gets back to me that you are involved in drugs, back on the pole, or bringing home dangerous men, I’ll come looking for you. And, believe me, you don’t want that. Have I made myself understood?”

Nikola nodded dumbly, her face drained of what little color it possessed.

“Good,” Sonja smiled as Ryan returned with a cinnamon roll the size of his head. “I’m glad we could see eye-to-eye.”

Sonja glanced through the window of the taxi at the 747 soaring overhead. She wondered if Ryan was preoccupied with the wonders of the first-class cabin or if he was staring out the window, trying to catch a final glimpse of the world he and his mother had just escaped. Or perhaps he was just reading Make Way For Ducklings and finally getting back to being a kid.

She wondered if she did the right thing tampering with Nikola’s mind at the last minute, but couldn’t find it in herself to feel that bad about what she’d done. So what if she planted a couple of subliminal suggestions and bumped up the woman’s sense of responsibility and self-respect a little higher? It wasn’t like she was telling her to go out and start shooting at cars on the freeway. Nikola had the basic hardwiring and genuine love for her son to make a really good mom—but there was also a darkness in her, as well. There had to be for Esher to have such sway over her. Esher wasn’t the first lover in her life to prey upon her chronic bad taste in men and weakness for cocaine, but he was certainly the most monstrous.

Come nightfall mother and son would be safe and sound on the other side of the country. They would be facing a brave new world free—at least on the surface—of bloodsucking monsters. While she, on the other hand, would be trying to drain the swamp and up to her ass in alligators. But that was nothing new, was it?

As the taxi headed back into the city, she grimaced and fought the urge to scratch the stump of her left pinkie. The damned things always itched like hell when they grew back.

Chapter Eighteen

As Esher emerged from his day’s hibernation, the events of the previous night remained fresh in his mind. As he climbed out of his casket, which was designed so that the side was on a hinge and would drop away when the lid was unlocked and lifted from the inside, Esher reminded himself that he would soon need to requisition a larger version, so that Nikola might sleep beside him during the day. He was at a loss to explain his obsession with the dancer, even to himself. But that is how it always was with vampires their consorts. The fascination burns bright and strong, and although it is not true love, it gives off enough light and heat to pass for the real thing. Only during these passing moments of mad fancy did Esher truly feel alive. There was a time, years ago, when he had been similarly obsessed with Decima—and Darcy before her.

Esher did not like thinking about Darcy, as he found dwelling on this mistakes distasteful. But perhaps what bothered him the most was how her visage would sometimes come to him unbidden, in a moment’s quiet, even a hundred years later.

In life she had been a beer-hall songstress, singing for pennies in the Bowery’s rowdy houses. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing; and her skin, when scrubbed of the coal-dust and filth of the Lower East Side, was as white as the flesh of an apple. It was her voice, however, that first drew him to her. He was walking down the crowded sidewalks, searching for that evening’s prey, when he heard what sounded like an angel lost among the damned. He went in and out of the myriad dives lining the street until he came to one with straw and sawdust spread across the floor to sop up the beer, vomit and blood. And there, amid the squalor, he found an fifteen-year-old girl standing on the bar and singing for the pennies pitched her way by drunken miscreants, while her father stood by, drinking what meager wages she earned as quickly as he could, and eager to pimp her to any taker for the price of a bottle of rotgut.

That very evening Esher brought Darcy under his wing by pretending to be an impresario interested in promoting her as the next Jenny Lind. It wasn’t difficult to make her wretched father ‘disappear’ and for him to take his place as her manager and confidante. For six years he kept her human, while slowly educating her in the same occult secrets Gabor had shared with him. His decision to make her his equal proved a near-fatal mistake.

Thirty years later, Darcy, herself, became enamored of a human male and wished to Make him in her image, as Esher had Made her in his. But he became jealous of the attention she lavished on the young man, and killed him before she could turn him into one of the undead. Enraged, Darcy openly challenged him to a duel, just as Gabor had done. So he destroyed her. When she screamed for the last time, her voice was as pure and strong as it had been the night he first saw her, singing for pennies.

It was a long time before he took another consort. When he first met Decima, she was a grubby little hippie chick; a deeply troubled young girl from a middle-class suburban family looking for something she could not describe, even to herself. Under his ministrations she blossomed from a flower child into a child of the night. But Esher had learned his lesson with Darcy, and when he Made his new bride in his image, she did not enter the eternal world an equal. And for a decade or three he was satisfied by her company.

Until he saw Nikola.

Something about the way she moved when she danced triggered a possessive madness in him he hadn’t felt since he heard Darcy singing in the Bowery. Perhaps there was something in those touched by the muse that resonated with him—much like his friendship with the poet. But no. That would imply weakness. Regret. And a Noble of the Ruling Class may never know such things. Or so he told himself.

Better to busy his mind with other, more pressing business, such as how to repair the damage done by last night’s misadventures. He would have to move quickly if he was to secure his position against Sinjon and the others of the Ruling Class. However, he had crafted numerous spells and blood contracts over the years, and he was not without his friends in low places. While he might not be able to overthrow the governing body of Nobles, he had no doubt that he could successfully defy it.

His original plan of acting as a mercenary force for the Borges Brothers was now completely ruined. He had intended to present the druglords with the stolen narcotics as a gesture of good faith, but still, even with his potential partners dead, five kilos of cocaine was not without its uses. He could easily convert it to pay for more weapons and ammunition. After all, incendiary bullets did not come cheap, even in volume.

He walked over to the alcove hidden by the beaded curtain and took out the Chinese Box. Esher lifted the lid opened the box, and found himself looking an empty cavity—empty, that is, save for a lace hanky. He did not need to sniff its scent to guess the identity of its owner. The Masonic symbol embroidered in lieu of a monogram told him to whom it belonged. Esher’s rage was so immense it manifested as the utmost calm

There was a knock on his door and Decima entered the room, the wound dealt her face by the brat’s crucifix still raw and angry red. “Milord, the Batmobile’s been repaired, as you commanded.”

“Excellent. Bring Lady Nikola to me I would like the brood to assemble tonight!”

Decima raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Again?”

“Do not question me!” he snapped. “Just do it! Put out the word!”

“As you wish, milord,” she said, quickly withdrawing.

Esher strode through the contorted halls in the direction of the audience chamber. Upon his entrance, a thin, nondescript vampire with lank hair and the clothes of an office worker awaited him, fidgeting nervously.

“Yes, what is it—?” he growled.

“We, uh, we finally located Orgot, milord.”

“Indeed,” he sighed as he dropped into his chair of office. “And what the old wino’s excuse for being gone these last few days?”

“He’s dead, milord.”

“Of course he’s dead!” Esher snapped. “He’s one of us!”

“No, milord—I mean Truly Dead. We found what was left of him stuffed under a sofa in the barracks. There wasn’t much left, but it looks like silver poisoning.”

Esher leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed in thought. What was it that Gabor had told him before his own destruction about nursing a serpent at his bosom?

The doors to the audience chamber flew open and a highly agitated Decima ran in, holding aloft black roses tied with a purple satin ribbon. “Milord! Sinjon has taken your bride!”

“What!?!” Esher thundered as he shot to his feet.

“I went to pick up Nikola, as you requested—but all the Pointers assigned to guard the safe house are dead. So is Obeah—with the back of his head blown off. Nikola is missing—and these were left on her bed!”

“A dozen black roses has been the calling card for brood war amongst the Ruling Class for centuries,” Esher said, taking the bouquet from his lieutenant’s hand. “Sinjon is the one who hurled down the gauntlet—not I! He is the aggressor—I am merely protecting myself!”

“I also found this while I was there,” Decima said, displaying a neatly severed left pinkie. “It was under Obeah’s body.” She held them out to Esher, who took the finger and sniffed it like a fine cigar before licking the bloody stump.

“I know this blood,” he scowled. “It belongs to the one called Sonja.”

“That explains why the door to the safe house wasn’t forced. Obeah opened it of his own free will because he recognized her! I told you that mirror-eyed bitch was going to be trouble!”

As much as he was loath to admit it, Decima was right. Sonja was the last one to see Orgot “alive”; she was the one left alone in the stronghold when he went to parlay with the Borges Brothers; she was the one who had supposedly destroyed the old man and the boy. He wondered how she spirited Nikola away so close to sunrise; apparently she was far more resourceful than even he had realized.

Esher carefully wrapped the severed finger in the lace hanky. When he finished he looked up to find Decima awaiting his orders like an eager hound. “Bring Sonja to me,” he said. His voice was very, very calm.

Decima licked her lips, displaying both her fangs and the surgical steel piercing in her tongue. “As you command, sire.”

As Sonja rolled off the filthy mattress in the attic and cursed her altruistic streak. Reuniting Ryan with his mother had not been part of her original plan—and now it was costing her. She glanced down at her wounded hand. Her pinkie still looked like a well-used eraser—the end result of not getting enough sleep to regenerate properly. She knew she was pushing herself too hard—but she had no alternative.

A little fresh blood would help work wonders and give her back that all-important edge. She could either prey on one of the myriad gang members wandering Deadtown, or avail herself of the feeders at Dance Macabre. While the second option was considerably easier, she could not bring herself to do such a thing. She wasn’t like those giggling monsters flocking to Esher’s banner. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. But then—she had his blood inside her, now. That’s probably why she even contemplated using the feeders in the first place.

By now Esher would know of Nikola’s disappearance. The bouquet of black roses—the ritual signature of open warfare between Nobles—was all the proof he would needed to blame Sinjon. She had no doubt one of the two vampires would wipe the other out, saving her the trouble of having to tackle both without them forming an alliance against her. It was far easier to dispose of them as separate, squabbling entities than as a unified force.

She climbed out an attic window that overlooked the alley, creeping down the face of the building like a black leather lizard. Careful to remain in the deepest shadows, she hurried along until she came to The Street With No Name. It would be easy enough to lure one of the Pointers away on some pretense or another. Despite their much-vaunted macho, the gang members were submissive to any vampire that approached them. Like most humans drawn to serve the darker powers, they wanted the flame for their own, yet did not want to burn in order to claim it.

She spotted three Pointers halfway up the street and quickened her pace. One of the youths noticed her approach and nodded in her direction to his companions. The one with his back to her tossed his cigarette aside and reached for something tucked in the front of his pants. Sonja was already lunging to the side as he began to turn, rolling as she hit the pavement as the Pointer spun and fired his 9mm, holding it to the side so that the spent cartridges flew away from him. She came out of her roll crouched low, snarling like a cornered wildcat, her fangs bared. The shooter looked at his now-empty gun, swallowed, and took a step backward. With an angry growl, she pounced, taking him down hard enough to snap his back. His remaining friends stared in stunned surprise as she crouched atop the body before one of them scrambled to grab the gun jutting from his own waistband. Sonja came up off the sidewalk like a jack-in-the-box, ramming her skull deep into his solar plexus. The third Pointer managed to get a shot off, only to shoot his friend instead. Sonja delivered a side kick that knocked the gun from his hand, followed by a forward snap kick that put the steel toe of her boot into his abdomen with enough force to rupture his spleen. As she stopped to survey the mayhem and pick a donor for her evening repast, something slammed her against a nearby brick wall. She tried to move, but couldn’t. She looked down at her right side and saw the last few inches of a crossbow bolt jutting from her flesh, pinning her like a butterfly.

“Esher wants to see you,” Decima said as she casually strode from the shadows of a nearby alley.

“Tough shit. I don’t want to see him,” Sonja grunted as she tugged on the arrow piercing her side. The shaft was slippery with blood and less readily identifiable ichor, making it hard for her to get a secure grip. The pain was enough to push her to the edge of consciousness with every yank.

“Oh, you’re going to see him, all right,” Decima replied, leveling the loaded crossbow directly at Sonja’s head. “Even if it’s the last thing you do.”

There was pain in her shoulders and her side. Good. That meant she wasn’t dead yet. Sonja opened first one eye, then the other. She was in a room with thick stone walls and no windows, suspended from the ceiling by her wrists, the toes of her boots barely scraping the floor. Her leather jacket and sunglasses had been removed. She did not know where she was and had no memory of being transported there. The last thing she recalled was Decima yanking the arrow free of her mid-section, and the wave of accompanying agony that had brought her to her knees. She also had a not-so-dim memory of Decima giving her a good, swift kick to the head for good measure.

“Looks like our little traitor is coming around,” Esher said. The vampire lord leaned against the metal door that was the sole means of entering the cell, studying her like a man who had found a roach in his breakfast cereal.

“Cozy little dungeon you got here,” Sonja grunted as she spat out a mouthful of blood. “You ought to dress it up a bit with some skeletons and rubber bats, though, for that extra-spooky Mall Goth look.”

There was the sound of something cutting through the air, followed by an explosion of pain at the base of her spine. Sonja’s fangs clicked together, slicing her tongue to ribbons. A moment later Decima circled around to stand in front of her, twirling a piece of rebar in one hand like a cheerleader’s baton.

“Do you recognize the length of metal Decima is holding?” Esher asked. His voice was surprisingly pleasant, as if he was chatting about the weather or his favorite TV show. “It’s the same one Obeah used as a cane. I thought you’d appreciate the irony.”

“Yeah, you’re a regular Oscar Wilde,” she replied around the blood dribbling from her lips.

Decima moved to deliver another blow, but Esher stopped her with a small wave of his hand. He stepped forward so that he was inches from Sonja’s battered face. At such close physical proximity, Sonja could feel Esher’s blood within her stir, giving her a small thrill, like the touch of a lover.

“You disappoint me, my dear,” he said, looking into her unshielded eyes. “I thought you had better sense than to back a loser like Sinjon.”

“I told you she was not to be trusted,” Decima growled. “I smelled trouble on her from the very start.”

“I bow to your intuitiveness in this instance,” Esher said with a gracious nod to his lieutenant. “I allowed myself to be swayed by a pretty face and the fact that I so desperately need followers of a higher caliber than I usually get. This worthless sow has betrayed my confidence and will pay the price for doing so. But first I need answers—ones that only she can give. Then you are free to do with her as you wish.”

The vampire lord moved even closer, his eyes glowing like those of a wild animal prowling near a campfire as he pressed his mind against hers. Esher’s willpower radiated from him like heat from an open oven, and, for a brief moment, Sonja felt her resolve begin to weaken. It would be so easy to tell him the truth. To give him what he wanted…

Suddenly something dark stirred deep inside her, like a great beast rising from the farthest depths of the ocean. Sonja realized that Esher’s attempt to force her will had awoken The Other. The sensation that accompanied its approach was a familiar one to her. And, up until now, it had always been unwelcome.

“You win. I’ll tell you what you want to know,” she whispered.

“Where is Nikola?” Esher hissed.

“She’s in the Black Lodge with Sinjon.”

“And the drugs?”

“That’s with him, too.”

“What does he plan to do with Nikola?”

“He’s going to Make her in his image. He said you’ll have to bring down the Black Lodge stone by stone if you want her back.”

“Very well. He shall get his wish,” Esher said, his eyes narrowed to slits. He nodded to his lieutenant as he turned to leave the cell. “Do as you will with her. Just see that she’s Truly Dead when you’re finished.”

“As you command, milord,” Decima replied with a slow, mean smile.

Chapter Nineteen

Marvin Kopeck sat huddled next to the tiny stove that heated his squat, a threadbare blanket draped over his shoulders. Someone was screaming on the street outside his window, but he did not dare look to see what was going on. He had served in Viet Nam, but nothing in those distant jungles could compare to what stalked the streets of Deadtown once the sun went down. It was as if the earth’s crust had cracked to its very core, allowing a little bit of Hell to bubble up to the surface. What were nightmares of burning hooches and shrieking, napalm-drenched babies compared to the living dead?

Ilyana frowned as the screaming started up outside. Although she could remember a time when she did not live in Deadtown, she could not remember a time when there had not been screams in the night. She had survived both the Nazis and Stalin’s pogroms, only to find herself living in one of her grandmother’s folk stories. As if the vrykolka were not bad enough, the young men that served them were even worse. Hoodlums shackled to the devil, just like the Gypsies had once been in the old country, only worse. At least the Gypsies had never waited on her doorstep to demand a cut of her Social Security check.

“Come away from the window,” Lonny whispered, his voice sounding far older than his thirty-three years. “You don’t want to see what’s going on out there.”

“I can’t help it,” Janice said, hugging herself as she watched three Pointers kick an old man to death. “Whenever I hear someone yellin’ like that I just have to look to see if it’s someone I know. It’s instinctual, I guess.”

“So is self-preservation,” he grunted, not looking up from the spoon he was cooking. “Come sit down. You don’t want to attract their attention.” He stuck the needle into the sodden cotton, drawing the brownish liquid into the syringe with one deft pull. “Besides, I got a nice shot waiting for you here.”

Janice shook her head, flipping the lank, greasy strands out her face. “I dunno. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just tweakin’—but there’s somethin’ different about tonight. My skin’s all tight and tingly, like a big storm’s brewin’. Can’t you feel it?”

Lonny gave a dry little laugh as he wrapped the length of rubber tubing around his forearm. “Baby, I gave up feel in’ shit a long time ago.”

Father Eamon knelt before the altar, his rosary clutched in one hand, a bottle of Old Grandad in the other. In the uncertain light cast by the votive candles, the faces of the plaster saints looked more like lepers. He had been hearing something that sounded, at times, like a baby wailing on the steps to the church, which transformed into giddy, demonic laughter every time he drew near the front doors. He was uncertain if the noises were real or if he simply had the DTs again. He closed his eyes, but instead of prayer, he found himself reciting Shakespeare: “By the pricking of my thumbs …Something wicked this way comes …”

There are several different ways of killing the undead. One is of them is fire, as well as exposure to sunlight. Decapitation works as handily on a vampire as anything else. But all these methods were relatively quick. And Decima wasn’t looking for quick. She wanted to take her time.

One of the enduring myths about vampires is that because they are, technically, dead, they did not feel pain; which was not true at all. Granted, a vampire’s pain threshold was extremely high by human standards, but they were still perfectly capable of knowing agony. And Decima was determined to make her captive extremely intimate with every known form of suffering.

“Thought you were pretty smart, didn’t you?” she jeered as she brought the length of rebar down on Sonja’s collarbone, snapping it like a green branch. “You thought you could make a fool of my sire!” She swung again, smashing the steel bar smashed into her captive’s left side, splintering her ribs and driving splinters of bone into her lung. “And you did make a fool of him! I saw the way he looked at you! It was bad enough he cast me aside for that pathetic stripper, he wanted you as well!” She swung the rebar again, this time rupturing Sonja’s spleen. “In a way I’m glad you got away with as much as you did! At least you rid him of that simpering cow he’s been mooning over! How could he prefer that bitch to me?” she exclaimed in disbelief as she brought the makeshift club came down on first Sonja’s left kneecap, then the right. “She had no right making him love her!”

Wearying of the rebar, Decima delivered a punch to Sonja’s face, shattering her cheekbones and knocking her lower jaw askew. She then stepped back to regard her handiwork. As Sonja dangled by her wrists from the ceiling, she looked like a battered piñata. Blood poured from her nose and mouth, and her right eye was swollen so tightly it looked as if someone had slipped a goose egg under her eyelid.

She spotted Sonja’s leather jacket lying on the floor, where it had been tossed earlier, and bent to retrieve it. She had been thinking about replacing her old one. Seeing how they seemed to be the same size, it could prove to be a useful trophy. She searched the jacket and felt something tucked inside the inner breast pocket. She reached in and retrieved an ornate switchblade. The handle was made of polished ebony and decorated by a gold-leaf oriental dragon. Curious, she pressed the tiny ruby set in the dragon’s eye, a six inches of silver blade, shaped like a frozen flame, jumped from its hiding place, nearly spearing her hand.

Decima cried out in alarm and dropped the switchblade as if it was a rattlesnake. “Silver!” she hissed. She turned to stare at her captive, who dangled limply from her chains, watching her with one blood-filled eye. “What manner of vampire are you, that you would carry such a weapon?”

Sonja did not answer, but instead simply smiled until it looked as if her lips would meet at the back of her head. Something that sounded like a cross between a lion’s growl and the grinding of metal gears emerged from her broken chest. With a start, Decima realized it was laughter.

Sonja tossed back her head and the laughter twisted in on itself and became a roar unheard from any but the deepest pit as purple-black energy crackled into existence about her, like the halo of some dark saint. Decima raised a hand to shield her eyes as an arc of black light shot from her captive’s head and punched its way through the ceiling. The stink of ozone filled the room as a wind from nowhere found its way into the sealed room.

The Other was free again. And there was going to be Hell on Earth to pay.

Marvin Kopeck bent nearly double, his hands clamped over his ears to block out the screams. Tears streamed down his rigid face. Behind his eyes his best friend stepped on a mine and flew into bloody rags; a hysterical peasant woman clutched a roasted baby to her breast and wailed without end; a Viet Mihn officer stuck a rifle barrel up a terrified girl’s vagina and pulled the trigger until the screaming inside him blended with the screaming outside him, and Marvin Kopeck finally decided he’d had enough. After all these years, he was no longer afraid.

He stood up, tossing aside the blanket, and walked over to the narrow cot that served as his bed. He pulled the footlocker out and opened the lid. Everything was still there, just as he’d left it in 1975.

Janice stared at the loaded syringe, then back at Lonny. He was slumped on the mattress, already on the nod, a gout of vomit drying on his shirt. She picked up the needle, frowning at the crust of old blood. She closed her eyes and readied herself for the plunge, but something made her stop.

“Fuck this!” she snarled, hurling the syringe against the wall.

The sound of thunder stirred Ilyana to look out the window. The hoodlums on the street below had stopped kicking their hapless victim and were standing with their heads tilted back, like a wolf pack scenting a coming storm. Discarded newspapers and other bits of trash blew along the streets and gutters. The sky over Deadtown swirled like ink in an aquarium as clouds the color of a ripe bruise boiled forth, their bellies lit from within by flashes of purple-white light.

From his perch the bell tower, Father Eamon pressed his rosary to his cracked lips, then took another swig from his bottle, as a tongue of purple-black lightning leapt upward from Esher’s stronghold, puncturing the ripe, overhanging clouds like a boil. Smaller fingers of dark electricity shot forth from the center, like the ribs of an umbrella, and zigzagged throughout the neighborhood.

Judgment had come to Deadtown.

There is a thin line between rage and madness. Every human has, at one time or another, experienced both emotions, in varying increments of strength. While gripped in rage’s white-hot hand, an otherwise sane man may commit acts he would never dream of in calmer moments. But most do not succumb to passion-born madness for fear of the repercussions such actions exact from the authorities. Fear, more than virtue, holds humanity rigid within its social orbits: fear of punishment, fear of the unknown; fear of changing things forever, and not for the better.

But if the resentment and anger that lie boiling beneath the crust of an oppressed society are stoked high enough, the fear that keeps them lying prostrate while their enemy grinds his boot in their collective face will trigger their sense of self-preservation. When that happens, timidity is replaced by fury. And the more desperate the community, the less they have to lose. And the less they have to lose, the more likely they are to succumb to the madness that lurks in the heart of even the most righteous anger.

Of course, it also helped that the denizens of Deadtown were all half-crazy to begin with.

Jesse, Marcus and Antwan had found the old lush cowering near a dumpster. The bum had risked leaving whatever dank hidey-hole he called home to score a bottle, and now he was paying the price. Jesse liked kicking the drunk around, since he reminded him of his rat bastard old man. Judging from how the others were going after the lush, he must have reminded all of them of someone they hated. He stopped kicking the old man yellow and tilted his head back, frowning at the rapidly swelling thunderheads filling the sky.

Marcus paused to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and spotted the scowl on Jesse’s face. “’Sup, cuz?”

“Dunno. Somethin’ ain’t right,” Jesse replied. Suddenly the sky overhead was split by a freak lightning bolt that seemed to leap up from the ground, then splinter into a hundred smaller ones. “Jesus fuck! What was that?!?”

The answer came in the form of a moan. At first Jesse thought it was the bum lying at his feet. Then he realized the sound was too loud to be coming from just one person. It was as if hundreds of voices were united as one, like when a stadium groans at the home team’s loss. It was as if the very buildings were wailing. Jesse, Marcus and Antwan exchanged wary glances. Weird shit went down in Deadtown nightly-but nothing like this had ever happened before.

There was a collective bang as dozens of doors were abruptly thrown open and the denizens of Deadtown came pouring out of their tenements like ants from a burning tree. These were the nameless faces that usually cowered in doorways or hurried away when Jesse and his friends walked down the street. These were the ones who disappeared behind barricaded doors at the first sign of dusk. These were the old, the deranged, the dispossessed and disowned. They were the children of exile who, through fate or design, had found themselves with nowhere else to go but Deadtown.

Jesse noticed with alarm that while most of those flooding the streets wielded nothing more than sticks, some of them carried more conventional weapons. He pulled his semiautomatic out of his waistband, trying to decide whether to stand his ground or flee. Marcus and Antwan looked equally uncertain.

“Jesse! What do we do?” Antwan whispered, trying to keep his voice from turning into a frightened squeak.

“Fuck, man! Spray their asses!” Marcus barked, firing a volley at the rapidly approaching mob.

Ilyana could not tell if the young men firing at her were Nazis or Cossacks or Soviet Army Regulars. They seemed to flicker from one to the other and back again, as if glimpsed through the flames of a burning house. Then a bullet tore through her throat, dropping her to the pavement. She barely felt the others as they trampled her, but she could see her blood coating the soles of their feet. As she gasped out her last feeble breath, the ghosts of her slaughtered family crowded her fading vision, like moths about a candle.

Jesse stared in numb disbelief at the horde surging toward him. He’d emptied at least two clips, but still they came, stepping over the bleeding bodies of their fellows as if they weren’t there. The ragged wail grew louder, angrier, closer.

“Shit, man! This is just like Night of the Living Dead!” Antwan moaned as he slapped a fresh clip into the butt of his semiautomatic. “The fuckers won’t stop coming!”

“Fuck makin’ a stand!” Marcus said, taking a step backward as the mob approached. “We gots to run for it!”

“You want to be the one t’tell King Hell what’s going down, feel free!”

Jesse retorted. “Me, I’d rather take my chances with these fuckers!”

Marvin Kopeck stepped forward, dressed in the uniform in which he’d been sent home, his Purple Heart and Bronze Star rattling on his chest like Christmas ornaments. The gang member in front of him wavered, became a VC in black pajamas, then transformed into the laughing Viet Mihn officer waving his bloodied rifle barrel, before melting into his platoon leader, holding up a screaming baby by the ankle like it was a piglet. In the end it didn’t really matter. They were all The Enemy. He opened fire with his M16, five rounds stitching across Jesse’s torso, going from right hip to left shoulder, and throwing him into his companions like a ruptured sack of grain.

“Fuck this shit!” Marcus wailed as he turned to flee. He took two steps before M16 fire caught him across the back, effectively slicing him in two.

Antwan stared at the bloody remains of his companions for a second, then tossed his gun onto the ground and put his hands behind his head. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot, man! I give up!” he wailed, sounding every day of his fifteen years.

The sea of angry faces surged forward, their outstretched hands tearing at their former tormentor’s flesh. Antwan began to scream. His cries for help were quickly muffled by the bodies of the mob as they pulled, tore, and kicked like a pack of wolves worrying a deer to death. When the screams finally stopped, the group moved on, leaving the ravaged carcass where it lay.

As the crowd moved forward, Janice stopped long enough to remove the gun from Jesse’s dead hand. She turned the Luger over, wondering if it still had any ammunition left.

“Janice!” Lonny was standing on the top stoop of their building, tottering uncertainly in the doorframe. He looked confused and blurry-eyed, like he’d just woken up from a long nap. “Janice-what are you doing out here? Come back inside where it’s safe!” He squinted at the Luger she was holding. “What you got there?” A sly, hungry look crossed his face as he licked his lips. “I know this guy who’ll give us some smack for it …”

Janice pointed the Luger at Lonny and squeezed the trigger. He staggered, then fell headfirst down the front steps, landing in a heap at the foot of the stairs.

Yeah, there were still some bullets in it.

Decima shielded her eyes from the strange energy that enveloped her prisoner in a pulsing shroud, while the sourceless wind raging inside the interrogation room continued to howl. Whatever the trouble-making bitch was, she certainly wasn’t a garden-variety vampire. Only Nobles had the power to control the elements on such a level.

With a shriek of maniacal glee, The Other yanked herself free of her restraints, pulling her right shoulder out of its socket, and turned to grin at her tormentor Decima. And for the first time in decades Decima knew terror. Not merely the fear of punishment from her sire, but the genuine terror that comes from seeing your death in the eyes of another.

The Other’s grin grew wider as it moved forward, her hair whipping in the maelstrom like angry black snakes, as Decima surged to greet her, swinging her makeshift club with both hand. The Other proved too quick for her, and easily batted the length of pipe out of her grip. Decima swore and jumped aside, snatching up her cocked and loaded crossbow, firing it into her opponent’s chest. The Other yowled like a scalded cat and toppled backward, clutching at the bolt jutting from her breast. Decima lost no time in pouncing on her, pinning her adversary to the floor. She pulled the switchblade she’d taken from Sonja’s jacket and hit the trigger release.

The Other’s eyes widened at the sight of the silver blade. “No!” she shouted out, lifting her hands to her face, as if to blot out the sight of her approaching doom.

“Die, bitch!” Decima screamed as she plunged the silver blade into her enemy’s heart.

The Other cried out and then went still. The gale-force wind that had filled the room abruptly stopped, as if someone had flipped a switch. The weird witchlight faded and fizzled as well, like firecrackers tossed in a puddle.

“That’s what you get for fuckin’ with me, bitch,” Decima smirked as she admired her handiwork.

Suddenly The Other’s eyes flew back open. “I couldn’t have said it better myself,” she grinned as she plucked the silver switchblade from her chest and plunged it into Decima’s right ear.

Decima shot to her feet, frantically grabbing at the deadly silver knife lodged in her head as her eyes began to swell, until they sprang from their sockets like water balloons. Her screams were so shrill they climbed into the ultrasonic register, like those of a bat. She trembled like a tuning fork as her brain liquefied and poured out her nose and ears. Her central nervous system destroyed, she crashed to the floor, landing with enough force to drive the knifepoint of the switchblade all the way through her head and out her left ear.

The Other looked down at Decima’s rapidly putrefying carcass and, grinning in triumph, kicked it in the fangs with her steel-toed boots. As she pulled the gore-covered switchblade from the dead vampire’s skull, like Arthur drawing Excalibur from the stone, The Other was racked by a cough that sent a lungful of blood geysering forth from her mouth.

As the spasm passed, so did The Other’s control, allowing Sonja to resume possession of their shared physical self. As she snapped off the last few inches of crossbow protruding from her chest, the pain made her vision go monochromatic and seemed to fill her ears with water. She staggered backward, fighting the instinct to curl up in a dark corner and regenerate. If she wanted to survive the night, she had to get out of Esher’s stronghold, and it was going to take everything she had to do so.

Sonja had no idea what madness The Other had tapped into in order to siphon the energy necessary to break free, but it had to be big. She tried the door to the cell and, to her surprise, discovered it unlocked and the hallway deserted. No doubt no one ever left the room in anything but a body bag. She glanced back at Decima, whose body lay twisted on the floor like an animal with its foot in a trap. It was like staring into a funhouse mirror and seeing what she might have become had her own sire, Lord Morgan, bothered to take her under his wing and tutor her in the ways of monstrosity. She shuddered at the thought of what she could have become.

I didn’t haul our collective ass out of the frying pan so you could stand around in the fire! growled an all-too-familiar inner voice. Get us out of here!

“Shut up!” Sonja snarled, shaking her head in a futile attempt to clear it of the intruder. Still, The Other was right. She was suffering from severe internal damage, even by vampire standards, and she was rapidly losing strength. She had to find a way out before Esher’s minions came after her. And in such a weakened state, there would be no second chance for escape.

She headed down the darkened corridor to the central vault, which served as the barracks for Esher’s brood. Once there, she would be able to escape by using one of the myriad tunnels that branched off from the main catacomb. Of course, that assumed she could stay a step ahead of her enemies. Hell, right now she’d be thrilled with just a half-step.

Chapter Twenty

Esher stood, arms folded, staring out at the sea of pallid, ruby-eyed faces turned toward him. The time had come. His troops were assembled before him, awaiting his commands. When at last he spoke, his words rang like a death knell. “Tonight it begins, my friends! Tonight is the last night for Sinjon and his brood! The gauntlet has been thrown down! This is war!”

“War!” came the response from a half-hundred throats. “War for Lord Esher!”

He smiled as the assembled members of his brood thrust their fists into the air, pumping their arms vigorously. Most of them would be truly dead come the dawn. But that did not matter. There was more cannon fodder where they came from. Come sunrise he would be the undisputed master of Deadtown.

Suddenly the doors to the audience chamber flew open and a badly frightened Pointer ran inside. The brood turned to stare in amazement at the intruder, as it was forbidden for humans to enter Esher’s presence unannounced. The youth’s clothes were torn and his face bloodied and bruised from tumbling up stairs and colliding with flying doors. A pair of vampires grabbed him, pinning his arms behind his back, and dragged him to the dais.

“What is the meaning for such an interruption?” Esher demanded.

“Milord!” the boy cried. “The streets are on fire!”

“What do you mean—?”

“Deadtown’s gone crazy! They’re throwing bottles, rocks, and burning down buildings! Some of them even have guns and knives!”

Esher’s frown deepened into a scowl. “You mean Sinjon’s forces are on the attack?”

“I seen a bunch of old ladies tear apart a Black Spoon with their bare hands, so it ain’t him! It’s bad out there! End-of-the-world bad! I ain’t lying, milord—check it out for yourself!”

Esher tilted his head to one side, like a bird listening for the telltale rustle of a hidden earthworm’s passage. He could make out the distant din of screams and smashing glass and gunfire from beyond the thick walls of the House. At first the noise was faint, but growing perceptibly louder—and closer—with each passing second.

“A riot? Now, of all times? This must be Sinjon’s doing!”

“How can it be him?” the frightened gang member said. “The freaks are goin’ after everyone out there, it don’t make no difference! Some of ’em are even goin’ after each other! What do we do?”

“What does any army do in wartime?” Esher snarled. “Break out the heavy munitions! Arm your men to the teeth and tell them to kill everything and everyone in their path! Is that clear?”

“Yes, milord!”

“Go do it, then!” Esher snapped. He turned his back on his audience, massaging his lower jaw as he thought. Without warning, there was a sharp pain in his chest, as if an unseen hand had driven a knife into his heart. He staggered backward, then dropped heavily into his chair, his limbs as wooden and lifeless as a puppet’s. He’d only experienced such numbing emptiness once before—when he had been forced to destroy Darcy.

One of the recruits gathered at the foot of the dais edged forward. “M-milord? Is something wrong?”

Esher’s lips pulled into a grimace so frightful the other vampire instinctively cringed. “The Lady Decima is dead! Avenge her, my children! Bring me the head of the one called Sonja!”

Without hesitation, Esher’s brood hurried from the audience chamber, their voices raised in an ululating cry, like a pack of baying hounds in pursuit of a fox.

Sonja counted herself in luck. The barracks were empty; the collection of mildewed mattresses and rotting futons stretched before her like a subterranean homeless shelter. All she had to do was disappear down one of the tunnels that led to the cellars that served as auxiliary entrances to the House of Esher. Suddenly a voice from behind her cried out: “There she is!”

She turned to see a pasty-faced vampire, his eyes gleaming like those of a rabid rat, standing at the foot of the sub-basement stairs, pointing in her direction. Behind him crowded dozens of equally pallid, hungry faces.

“Get her!”

Sonja wheeled back around and ran toward the nearest exit. She tried to boost herself into overdrive, even though it felt as if her insides were being taken apart. At least she would be able to see the ghostwalkers as they attacked her—like the asshole who just zipped past her and had positioned himself at the mouth of the tunnel. The vampire was tall and pale, with lank hair that hung in his gaunt face, a tight-fitting pair of leather pants, and a black net T-shirt. He grinned at her, exposing his dripping fangs.

“Outta my way, deadboy!” she snarled, driving her switchblade into the vampire’s throat and pushing him aside without a second glance. She continued to run as her pursuers crowded the narrow, unlit tunnel, snapping and slashing at one another in their eagerness to snare their quarry.

She had to escape. She had to get away, even though felt as if her gut was full of broken glass, and every step drove a barbed spike deeper and deeper into her back. Her arms felt like pieces of cold meat hanging from her shoulders and the numbness was spreading to her legs. Her right lung was full of blood and the left was swimming with bone splinters. She was lucky that most of the recruits to Esher’s brood were so raw they didn’t know how to ghostwalk, but luck always runs out sometime.

Sonja stumbled out of the tunnel into an exposed cellar strewn with garbage. She looked about frantically for sign of a staircase, only to discover it had long since rotted away. She flung herself at the wall, scrabbling at the brickface with the frenetic tenacity of a cornered rat as her pursuers boiled out of the tunnel like blowflies from a corpse, shrieking for her blood. As she was about to pull herself over the lip of the pit, a shadow suddenly loomed over her.

“Fuck you!” Janice screamed down at the pit of vampires. “Fuck all of you!” She opened fire, laughing as the white-faced monsters collided with one another, trying to dodge the lethal incendiary bullets in the gang-member’s gun.

“Help me,” Sonja rasped. “They’re trying to kill me.” The girl standing over her was painfully thin, with hair that hadn’t been washed in weeks, and dressed in threadbare jeans, a tank top emblazoned with a faded decal, and a pair of busted-out high-tops. Her inner arms were pockmarked with needle tracks, some of them badly infected, but she at least seemed to be human. “Please—give me your hand.”

Janice pointed the Luger at Sonja’s head. “Fuck you too, bitch,” she said, her voice sounding almost dreamy. She pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.

Sonja grabbed the junkie by the ankle and yanked, sending her tumbling headfirst into the open cellar. The vampires yowled in delight as they pounced on the human that had landed in their midst. Sonja dragged herself out of the pit and staggered to her feet. The morsel tossed to her pursuers would distract them for a minute or two—but no longer.

As she loped through the blighted no-man’s-land of razed buildings that ringed Esher’s stronghold, she could finally see for herself the madness the Other had unleashed on Deadtown. Several nearby tenements were on fire, and although she could hear screams and gunfire, the wailing of ambulance and fire truck sirens was eerily absent. The buildings would burn until they collapsed into their basements, with the blaze spreading to the surrounding structures, without a single hand lifted to halt it. Those who were injured had the choice of either dying on the streets or dragging themselves off to some safe place to lick their wounds.

As she leaned against an alley wall, struggling to catch her breath, she glimpsed a couple of Pointers stumbling down the sidewalk. They had the look of young wildebeests that had somehow managed to elude a pride of lions, their eyes bugging from their heads as they moved as fast as their damaged limbs could carry them.

She was starting to piece things together, and it appeared that The Other had triggered the fight-or-flight instinct in Deadtown’s citizens, finally awakening the predator inside the prey. For the first time in decades she didn’t feel guilty about setting the darkness within her free.

As she rounded the corner she stumbled over a body, landing hard on her wounded side. The pain was so overwhelming there was nothing for her to do but to lie there and ride it out as it washed over her body like a wave. The corpse that had tripped her had recently been a man in his late fifties, with the haggard features of a street crazy, dressed in a Marine Corps dress uniform, complete with decorations. Someone or something had dropped a cinderblock on his head from one of the nearby buildings, crushing his skull. While he still clutched an M16 rifle in one hand, the action had been jammed, rendering it useless. However, the bandolier of live grenades he was wearing had not been touched. Sonja hurriedly removed the weapon harness and looped it over her shoulders. Weighing a pound apiece, the grenades pressed against her leather jacket like deadly fruit, rattling ominously as she staggered to her feet.

She could hear the wordless howling of Esher’s bloodhounds closing in on her. She resumed her jog, although her right knee no longer seemed to want to bend the way it was supposed to. She ducked into a nearby doorway and yanked one of the spherical grenades free, holding the safety lever tightly with her left hand. She peeped around the doorway in time to see Esher’s recruits emerge from the alley onto the street. The vampire at the head of the pack’s head was tossed back, scenting the air, while the rest pushed and shoved and snapped at one another like nightmarish Keystone Kops. If it wasn’t her own head they were after, she would have been tempted to chuckle.

The lead tracker suddenly pointed in the direction she’d taken and the group surged forward eagerly. Sonja darted from her hiding place and lobbed the grenade, praying she wasn’t carrying a bandoleer full of duds. It sailed through the air and landed in the midst of the mob, exploding on contact. Two vampires were thrown into the gutter, their legs reduced to jelly, while a third found his intestines and stomach dangling about his calves. The others in the pack quickly dropped back; even though vampires could not die from such wounds, none of them particularly relished being blown apart.

The stranger grimaced as something soft inside her ruptured, sending blood frothing from her lips. Despite the pain, she had no choice but to continue to run. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw that the tracker was in the lead again, waving his more timid brethren onward. Sonja lobbed a second grenade, this time aiming directly at the leader of the pack.

“Heads up, asshole!”

The tracker instinctively raised a hand and caught the grenade just as it exploded, leaving only the lower half of his body. Sonja staggered out into the middle of the street, holding aloft another grenade.

“You want me so bad, you bloodless motherfuckers? Okay, come and get me! I’ll take you all to Hell!” As she drew back to throw the third grenade, the remaining vampires turned and ran. “Buncha wussies,” Sonja muttered under her breath as she watched them flee.

She took an unsteady step backward, nearly collapsing as her right knee disintegrated. The vision in her left eye was fuzzy and her right one flickered like an aging cathode tube. Every breath she took resulted in bloody froth from her nostrils and mouth. She winced and looked down to see a rib poking through her leather jacket. Damn it, she’d just had that lining replaced. She only hoped she could hold out until she reached her final destination.

She managed to get halfway up the steps before she collapsed. She lay there on her back as gray shadows crowded what was left of her vision. She had to keep moving and hide before Esher’s minions regathered their courage and came back for her. But her body simply refused to respond. She couldn’t feel her legs anymore, and she could no longer move her arms. She couldn’t feel anything except the pain, which started at hair and extended to her toenails.

Suddenly one of the gray shadows came forward, moving close enough for her to see it was a man. His face was wrinkled and careworn, his jaw unshaven, and he wore a priest’s collar that was the same color as his graying hair. He stared down at her with a mixture of fear, fascination and repugnance, as if she were a rare but exceptionally repellent insect.

Focusing what little strength she still had left, Sonja managed to lift a hand in supplication. The priest flinched, but did not move away, as her fingers brushed against the silver rosary draped about his neck. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a rattling gasp. As the priest leaned forward, she clutched the front of his cassock, pulling him closer so he might hear her plea.

“Sanctuary.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The odor of damp earth surrounded her, and for the briefest moment Sonja thought she was still trapped in the catacombs below Esher’s stronghold. But upon opening her eyes again she was still blurred, but she saw the figure of a priest kneeling over her, surrounding her. He looked to be in his early sixties, with gray hair that hung below his clerical collar. He had a strong nose and chin, and the gin blossoms on his cheeks imparted a mottled rosiness underneath the grime, with eyes as blue as a clear autumn sky.

“Don’t try to move,” he whispered. “You’re safe here.”

“Where am I?” she groaned. “And who are you?”

“I’m Father Eamon. And you’re in the vault beneath St. Everild.” “You mean the church across the street from the Black Lodge?”

The priest nodded and placed a cool hand to against her forehead, checking for fever. “I made a bed out of old choir robes for you, but I’m afraid they’re somewhat mildewed.”

“I’ll get over it,” she grunted.

Suddenly there came the sound of a not-so-distant explosion, and the entire church shook. Father Eamon stood up and peered out a heavily barred window that was set level with the sidewalk. His hand dropped automatically to the rosary about his neck. When he spoke, his voice was strangely calm, almost dreamy.

“Tonight I saw the Hand of God stretch out across Deadtown. It is a sign that the time has come for the just to rise up and put pay to the wicked for their sins. Tonight I cast aside my fear of the dark and unlocked the doors of my church for the first time in twelve years.” He glanced down at Sonja on her makeshift pallet. “At first when I saw you sprawled across the stairs, I thought you were Esher’s harlot—the one with the piercings.”

“Seems to be a common mistake around here: confusing the two of us,” Sonja said wryly. “It won’t be happening any more, though, now that I’ve killed her.”

Father Eamon lifted an eyebrow. “Is that a confession?”

“Hell, no,” she replied. “Just a statement of fact.”

“I see a lot from the belfry. And one of the things I’ve seen is you. At first I thought you were one of them, because you slept during the day, and I saw you going in and out of the Black Lodge. But this morning, you were on the street with the boy and his mother. It was then I realized I had sorely misjudged you. I see now that you are a child of God, not Satan.”

“I wouldn’t go so that far, padre. You were a lot closer the first time. See what I mean?” she said, opening her mouth so he could see her fangs.

Father Eamon gasped and took a step backward, his hand closing on the rosary. “Impossible—! You touched my rosary! You asked for sanctuary—I have bathed your wounds in water from the baptismal font! I saw you walking in the full light of day!”

“Decades ago I was attacked by a vampire, but I never died. Now I’m trapped somewhere between human and vampire,” Sonja explained. “Silver doesn’t hurt me, and neither does sunlight.”

“Unclean fool!” Father Eamon spat, striking himself in the face with his open hand. The blow was hard enough to send him staggering. “I have sinned again! I have betrayed my Lord and brought a thing of the devil into this holy place!”

“Stop that!” Sonja snapped as the priest. “It’s bad enough I beat up on myself—I don’t need to lay here and watch you do it. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not like the others—I’ve spent over thirty years trying to wipe these monsters off the face of the earth.”

Eamon’s hand dropped to his side and he stared at her for a long moment. When he spoke again, he showed no trace of the violence and self-loathing of a moment before. “This is your handiwork, isn’t it?” he said, pointing toward the window. “This all ties in to you, somehow. That is why you were brought to St. Everild and why I felt compelled to help you. You are the Destroying Angel.”

“Beg pardon?” she frowned.

If Father Eamon heard her, he showed no sign of it as he paced about the vault like a caged lion. “According to the Apocrypha, deep within the bowels of Hell dwells a divine monster. While it has many names, it is best known as the Destroying Angel. It is the harbinger of punishment, vengeance, wrath, and death. Although the Destroying Angel dwells in Hell, it serves God. No doom is visited upon Mankind in which the Destroying Angel is not in its midst. When it executes its punishment on the world, it wields the Sword of God, and is as terrible as it is holy.”

Sonja eyed the priest cautiously. “Whatever I might be, I’m certainly no angel, padre!”

“You can deny it, if you wish,” Father Eamon replied. “But I know what I saw tonight was a sign from God. A sign that it is time for me to do something besides cower in the shadows and drink myself into a stupor when the sun goes down.”

Suddenly a burst of nearby submachine-gun fire drew the priest’s attention back to the window. He peered out onto the street, then stepped back, crossing himself.

“What is it?” Sonja asked. “What do you see?”

“Esher’s men,” he replied. “Dozens of them. They’re walking up the middle of the street, headed for the Black Lodge.”

Sonja pushed herself into a sitting position, even though her head felt as if it was swinging on the end of a tetherball cord. “Help me up.”

“You’re in no condition to move—!”

“I need to see what’s going on,” she replied as she struggled to stand.

Father Eamon clucked his tongue in reproach, but looped his arm under her shoulders and helped Sonja to her feet. She staggered slightly as her vision was momentarily filled with black specks like a connect-the-dots game. He helped her to the window, where she clutched the sill with trembling fingers.

The street in front of St. Everild was full of Esher’s followers, both human and vampire, armed with what looked like military-grade assault weapons. As she watched, a group of Black Spoons opened fire on the advancing invaders, only to have the salvo returned sevenfold, their Glocks and Lugers no match against the Pointers’ Kalashnikovs.

The over-amplified thump of industrial-strength rap, its bass-line thick as boilerplate, signaled the Batmobile’s approach. The vintage Caddy was flanked on either side by heavily armed gang-members, who trotted alongside the vehicles like Secret Service agents escorting a presidential motorcade.

“Looks like Esher’s bringing the fight to Sinjon,” Sonja muttered. “I guess ‘say it with flowers’ really does works.”

The Batmobile halted directly across the street from the Black Lodge to as one of the attendant bodyguards to open the rear passenger door. Esher emerged from the back seat and scanned the jumbled barricade of old furniture, broken masonry and timber erected in front of Sinjon’s stronghold. Behind the barrier stood the Black Spoons and Sinjon’s brood, their faces smeared with blood and soot. Esher reached back into the Batmobile and retrieved a bullhorn, which he lifted to his lips.

“Sinjon! I’ve come for what’s mine! Do you hear me, Freemason?”

Sinjon stepped out onto his third-story balcony and glowered at the assembled army at his doorstep. “What is the meaning of this, Esher?!? Have you gone mad like the rest of the rabble in this wretched place? First I have crazed derelicts attacking my men with torches and brickbats, now you! It’s less than an hour before dawn, you maniac!”

“Don’t play coy with me, you bastard! You know very well why I am here!”

“You are mad!” Sinjon spat, rolling his eyes in disgust.

“I want my woman! I want the cocaine you took from me! But most of all—I demand that you hand over the traitor called Sonja!”

“I have no idea what you’re raving about!” the vampire lord said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Return to your territory before the sun comes up!”

Esher lowered the bullhorn and made a quick, chopping gesture with his hand. The Pointers opened fire on the Black Lodge with their military-grade weapons, the bullets gouging thumb-sized holes in the building’s facade.

Sinjon flinched as an incendiary bullet whistled by his ear. He quickly withdrew from the exposed balcony, shouting at his minions to return fire.

“Daddy-what’s going on out there?” Johan asked. He was naked save for a black vinyl jockstrap, and his eyes were white with fear. He hadn’t been this frightened since Sinjon had taken him from the downtown bus terminal three months ago.

“The wizard’s lost his mind!” Sinjon replied. “He’s jabbering on about giving him back the girl and the drugs! And he seems convinced we’re harboring that Sonja-woman.”

“Did you tell him she’s not here?” Johan suggested helpfully.

Suddenly there came the sound of breaking glass and a grenade landed with a thud on the carpet. A second later the explosion sent glass and debris flying out of the windows and down onto the Black Spoons. Those members of Sinjon’s brood gathered behind the barricades lifted their pale faces as one, their scarlet eyes glittering with panic, and raised their hands in supplication, wailing in fear, calling out their sire’s name.

The situation outside the Black Lodge was indeed grim, with dead and dying gang members sprawled three-deep on the sidewalk. The vampire called Tristan—his body blown away from the waist down—dragged himself along his elbows, battening onto the wounded humans in hope of draining enough blood to hurry his own reconstruction. The dying gang members struggled feebly to escape the vampire’s grasp, their cries for help drowned out by the noise of the running firefight.

Esher’s forces fell back, taking cover behind front stoops and in doorways of the few nearby buildings that had yet to succumb to arson, while their master sat in the back of his bulletproof Caddy, watching the slaughter with a preternatural calm. During a lull in the combat, he glanced at the Rolex on his wrist and pulled a cell-phone from his pocket.

“King Hell to Firebird,” he said in an oddly tranquil voice. “Begin the suite.”

A pair of Pointers armed with M202 Flame Assault Shoulder Weapons zigzagged their way across the street, protected by covering fire from their fellow gang members. As they reached the steps of the church opposite the Black Lodge, one of them was shot in the head, but the other kept on moving.

A second later an incendiary rocket shot from the launcher and landed behind the barricade, splashing vampire and human alike in a shower of napalm. The jellied gasoline ignited instantly, and Sinjon’s followers shrieked in terrified agony as the flames ate through their clothes and skin. Those that leaped over the barricade in a desperate attempt to escape the inferno were instantly mown down.

The rocket-launcher fired a second time, sending its fiery cargo through a second-story window into the Black Lodge. There was a chorus of shrill screams as thick smoke began to pour forth. Figures began to flee the building, most of them on fire. A couple of vampires hesitated on the threshold, eyeing the lightening sky with dread, only to be forced out by the flames at their backs. As they tried to make a run for it, they were greeted by a hail of automatic weapon fire.

Esher smiled as he watched the bodies pile up on the street and the gutters fill with the blood of his enemies. Satisfied, he gave the signal for his vampire followers to stand down and return to the barracks. The sun would be coming up at any minutes and he had no desire to risk any more of his brood. He alone would remain behind, within his sun-proofed vehicle, and watch the fall of his enemy.

Tongues of flame leapt from every window of the Black Lodge, and thick black smoke boiled forth like a biblical swarm of locusts. Without warning Sinjon’s favorite, Johan, came running out of the inferno, his hair on fire and his blistered flesh hanging in large, flapping patches on his face, thighs and back. Blood trickled from his ears and nose from the concussion grenade that had detonated in his boudoir. He waved his arms frantically in an attempt to escape his pain, his screams as high and piercing as those of a child.

“Save me, Daddy!” he wailed. “Save me!”

The crossfire tore the boy to shreds in a matter of seconds, spinning him like a top. Johan staggered a few steps, a look of confusion on his ruined face, before finally collapsing onto the gore-soaked sidewalk.

Father Eamon lowered his head, crossing himself as he began to recite the Latin prayer for the dead. Sonja wanted to tell the priest that the boy was probably beyond such help, but held her tongue. As it was, she had to struggle to hide her pleasure at the carnage outside the window. Things were working out better than she’d hoped.

As she returned her gaze to the burning ruin across the street, Sinjon appeared in the crumbling doorway. The vampire lord’s finery was scorched and his powdered wig was gone, revealing a scabrous scalp through which his skull wetly gleamed.

The Pointer in command of the human wing-commander then turned to bellow at the others, waving at them to lower their weapons as Sinjon clambered over the barricade and made his way to where his favorite’s body lay in the street.

“Oh, my precious boy—look what they did to you!” Sinjon moaned as he pulled Johan’s ruined corpse into his arms, cradling it as he would a child, and rocked back and forth. All of his beautiful, beautiful boys were dead. Well and Truly Dead. Johan, Tristan, Ethan…All of them. The loss struck him like a knife twisted in a wound. Everything he had had built for over two centuries was dying all around him, consumed by flames and madness. He had been usurped. As he raised his eyes heavenward he saw, to his horror, the first fingers of daylight stretch across the early morning sky.

“You win, Esher!” the vampire lord shouted as he got to his feet, swaying like a drunken man. He staggered across the debris of the battlefield to where the Cadillac sat, its polarized windows rolled up tight against the coming dawn. “Deadtown is yours! I surrender! I recognize you as victor!” He pawed with trembling fingers at the rear passenger window as he glanced over his shoulder at the rising sun. His voice grew panicked, until he was all but sobbing. “I will swear allegiance and gladly surrender my blood to you! I will make myself your footstool and never once raise my hand against you, for as long as the oceans are wet! I promise you all that I am, Esher—just don’t let me burn!”

Sinjon’s skin prickled and itched as if he were covered in ants. He hissed in anger and pain and tried to shield his eyes with his lifted forearm, to no avail. He pounded his fist against the impassive black glass of the Cadillac, but it refused to shatter. He staggered away from the car, back toward Johan’s body, but collapsed before he could take a half-dozen steps.

He had never known such agony in all the centuries of his undeath. He lay panting on the ground, his eyes filling with tears and blood as the fluids inside him began to boil. His instincts told him to find shelter, to go to ground somewhere dark and cool and safe from the burning rays of the sun, but it was too late. There was nowhere left to escape to. He clawed at the pavement beneath his belly for a few frantic seconds, in hopes of burrowing into the earth, but his wildly scrabbling fingernails met only unyielding cobblestones.

His flesh blistered like bacon in the pan. He could smell himself cooking. The skin on his face bubbled and sloughed away like wax. His eyes turned dull white as they were boiled in their own ocular fluid. Despite the magnitude of his wounds and the pain he was in, Sinjon continued to crawl forward, groping blindly with his fleshless hands. Although he no longer possessed a sense of touch, he knew he must be close. He wanted to tell Johan he was sorry it had come to this, but his tongue was a piece of blackened leather. He wanted to kiss him one last time, but he had no lips. There was so much he wanted to do. But now, after nearly five centuries, the unimaginable had finally come to pass.

There was no. More.

Time.

As the early morning breeze scattered the Freemason’s ashes, Esher could no longer contain himself and began to laugh. “It’s time to return home,” he told his driver between guffaws. “There is nothing more to see here.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sonja watched the Batmobile bounce over the broken, bleeding bodies strewn throughout the street as Esher withdrew from the battlefield. The Pointers shambled behind their master’s car, looking as dead as their enemies. By her estimates, Esher had lost well over half his human servants to the riots and battle with Sinjon. She let go of the window ledge and sank to her knees, pressing her forehead against the cool stone.

“You need to lie down,” Father Eamon said.

“That leaves only the one, now,” she grunted as the priest helped her back to her makeshift bed.

“Sinjon was bad enough, but Esher—he is the devil made flesh!” Father Eamon spat. “Now the gutters of Deadtown will truly run with the blood of innocents!”

“Don’t be too sure of that. Do you have something to write with? I need you to take a message to a friend of mine.”

The priest left the room only to return a couple of minutes later with a tiny pencil stub and a flattened paper bag big enough to hold a fifth of whiskey. Sonja hastily scrawled an address and phone number down of the brown paper sack.

“I need you to take this to Eddie. He’s an older guy who lives in a basement squat a block or two over from here …”

“You mean the hippie?”

“Yes, the hippie,” she replied with a dry laugh, which abruptly turned into a violent coughing spasm that brought up clotted blood.

“I can’t leave you while you’re in this condition!” Father Eamon protested.

“Do what I ask you!” she gasped, shoving the paper into his hand. “Do it or I’ll die anyway! I can feel everything that’s wrong inside me. There’s a piece of rib stuck in my heart and my right lung has collapsed. If I were human, I would have died hours ago! There’s only one thing that can help me right now—and that’s blood. The address on this piece of paper is that of a man who specializes in providing black-market plasma to those like me. I need Eddie to arrange a buy from him. I need blood, and I need it now.”

“Yeah-what do you want?” Eddie growled, peering suspiciously at the grubby old man on the other side of his door. At first he assumed he was a derelict, then he noticed the priest’s collar about the other man’s throat.

“I was told to come here and give you this,” Father Eamon said, holding up the scrap of paper by way of explanation. “She said you’d know who she is.”

Eddie’s eyes lost some of their suspicion, but not their anxiety. “Sonja sent you? She’s alive?” He slipped the chain off the door and ushered the priest inside. “Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Father! I’m just not used to receiving company. Especially after a night like last night! I spent most of it trying to keep those fuckin’ loonies from torching my squat—pardon my French.”

Father Eamon stood in the middle of the front room, staring at the piles of books surrounding him. “I see you are a man of letters,” he said, not without some surprise. “I never dreamed there were so many books to be found in Deadtown.”

“They help pass the time at night,” Eddie replied. “Now, what about Sonja? Is she okay? Is she hurt? The last I saw her, that crazy bitch Decima was carrying her over her shoulder like a sack of flour. Then all Hell broke loose, and I had my hands full the rest of the night.”

“She is alive, but badly hurt. I found her on the steps of my church. She asked for sanctuary, so I brought her inside. I tended to her wounds and have tried to make her as comfortable as possible. She says she needs blood.” It was all Father Eamon could do to speak the words out loud without vomiting. “She says she will die without it. She gave me this address and phone number of a black marketeer to pass along to you.”

Eddie took the piece of paper and frowned at the scrawled information. “Tell her to rest easy, padre. I’ll take care of it.”

As Father Eamon started to leave, he turned to fix Eddie with a quizzical look. “May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead, Father.”

“Do you believe this woman is a thing of the Devil or a child of God?”

“I honestly don’t know what she is,” Eddie replied. “I always thought guys like you knew more about those kinds of things, though.”

“True,” Father Eamon admitted. “But Satan is devious. His devils can wear any number of skins. Sometimes even those of priests.”

“I couldn’t tell you anything about that, padre. But I can tell you what little I know about her. I’ll admit that she scares the bejesus outta me. But she’s saved my life more than once—and she didn’t have to. She helped that kid, Ryan, get back with his mom, and made sure they got away safe. She didn’t have to do any of that, but she did it anyway. I don’t know who she is, or what brought her to Deadtown, but it’s obvious she’s not like Sinjon or Esher—or anything else I’ve ever seen wandering the streets of this hellhole. She ain’t human—but I’m not too sure if that’s always a bad thing.”

Father Eamon picked his way through the wreckage left by the riots; fire had wiped out many of the neighborhood’s tenements, reminding him of the newsreels of the Battle of Britain he’d seen as a boy. Corpses littered the sidewalks and the stink of blood and smoke filled the morning air. The majority of the dead were human, dressed in the identifying colors of the Five Points Gang and the Black Spoons. Several of the gang members looked like they had been torn limb from limb. He glanced up and spotted a pair of Nikes dangling from a telephone line, the owner’s feet still inside. Scattered amongst the carnage was the occasional fleshless skeleton with oversized canines, proving that Death had come for the devil’s own as well as the sons of Adam. He knew it was his duty as a priest to go among the dead and administer last rites, but the task was a daunting one.

Everywhere he looked, he saw nothing but ruin. While the Dance Macabre on the Street With No Name appeared relatively untouched, Rackham’s Pool Hall had been reduced to a charred and gutted shell. Father Eamon noticed with a twinge of panic that the liquor store he frequented had been looted and torched as well, along with the handful of bodegas that served for what passed as Deadtown’s business community.

The priest’s mind kept turning back to the creature in the basement of St. Everild. He was certain now, more than ever, that she was responsible for the destruction that surrounded him. Was the woman a demon or an angel of the pit? He wished he could be certain of her motivations. What the old hippie had told him confused him even further. Could a monster have a soul? Could an angel cause the innocent to suffer? And what did it mean that he—the most wretched of sinners—was the one to whose door she came crawling?

He found her where he’d left her, curled up in a fetal position on the pile of moldy vestments. Her skin was cool and dry to the touch, like that of a snake, and she did not appear to be breathing. At first he was afraid she was dead, but when he prodded her with his foot she moved sluggishly and one of her eyelids flickered open, exposing a blood-filled white. Satisfied she was what passed for alive amongst her kind, he headed back upstairs.

As he knelt at the altar-rail, he realized his hands were shaking. He closed his eyes and bowed his head even lower, praying for forgiveness and strength This was the first day in years he’d gone without a drink. He cursed himself for being weak and using alcohol to hide from himself, if not his God. His body trembled and his tongue felt as dry as sandpaper in his mouth. The saints looked down at him from their reliquaries in silent reproach.

“What am I to do?” he asked the image of the Virgin Mary. “What is it that God wants of me? Am I to help the creature or destroy her? How am I to know His will? Give me a sign: weep tears, sweat blood—just do something.”

He held his breath, awaiting a reply, but received only silence, as he had every day for the last twelve years.

“Padre—?”

Father Eamon started upright, his muscles cramping from the sudden action. Disoriented, he glanced up at the stained-glass windows, and was startled to see it was already dusk. He must have fallen asleep.

Sonja was standing at the end of the nearest pew. Although pale to begin with, she managed to look unhealthy even for the undead. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “I was lost in prayer, that’s all. What are you doing up? You shouldn’t be walking about.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” she grunted, easing herself into the pew. “But I hate being cooped up.”

Father Eamon got to his feet, wincing as the blood rushed back to his legs. “I saw your friend. He said he would help.”

“Eddie’s an okay guy,” she grunted. “I just hope he doesn’t get nabbed by Esher’s goons. The bastard knows I wasn’t in the Black Lodge, and he’s not the kind to forgive and forget. I killed his lieutenant and stole his bride. He hates me more than he ever hated Sinjon. He won’t rest until he knows I’ve been destroyed.” She gave a dry laugh and thumped her chest. “I can feel his blood calling to me. It’s taking what little strength I have left not to get up and walk right back into his stronghold.”

“You really should go lie back down,” Father Eamon said insistently. “You look like Death warmed over.”

“You really know how to flatter a girl,” she laughed, pushing her sunglasses back up her nose. It was a surprisingly human gesture. “I’ll stay here for awhile, if it’s all right with you.” She glanced around, taking in the cracked stained glass, the toppled pews and the layers of dust. “Nice place you got. How long you been here?”

“Twelve years.”

“Don’t take this wrong, Father—but are you a real priest?”

Eamon surprised himself by chuckling. “I can certainly understand why you’d ask that, given my circumstances. But to answer your question, I was ordained in 1975.” He glanced up at the cross, then back down at her. “I hope you don’t mind me asking something personal; but were you religious before you, um, before you, uh…”

“Before I became what I am?” She suggested helpfully. Sonja looked thoughtful for a long moment. “I don’t think so. I mean, her family was as religious as your average American—which is to say, not very.”

“Why do say ‘her’?” he asked. “Are you not the same person?”

“It’s complicated,” she sighed. “The girl I used to be never died, but she didn’t survive what was done to her, either. I can remember every detail of her life, but it’s as if I watched it on a TV show, not actually experienced it. Like I said, I’m neither one thing or another. I’m a thing unto myself; a species of one. I can walk in the daylight and feed off the negative emotions of humans, as well as all the usual vampire bullshit. Some might even go so far as to say I possess superpowers.”

“What do you think you are?”

“I’m a monster who hunts monsters, and leave it at that,” she replied with a wry smile. “So, who is this Saint Everild when he’s at home?”

“Everild is a female saint,” he replied. “But beyond that, no one really knows that much about her, save that she lived in England in the Seventh Century and that she founded an abbey. But no one remembers why she is a saint, and all traces of her convent have disappeared, and no traditions have preserved the memory of its site. An appropriate patron for a No Man’s Land like Deadtown, don’t you think?

“I had heard stories about this place since I was an altar boy. There’s no documentation anywhere concerning St. Everild’s construction and consecration, but the legend goes that it is almost as old as Deadtown. Some said it was raised as a challenge to the dark powers that rule this place, while others claim the Holy See created it as a holding pen for its more troublesome clerics. All I know is that it was officially abandoned fifty years ago.”

“So what are you doing here?” she asked.

Father Eamon rubbed his mouth and glanced over at the statue of the Virgin Mother. Christ, he really needed a drink right at that moment. With a deep groan, he sat down beside her in the pew. He stared into the stranger’s mirrored gaze and saw the twinned reflection of what he’d become. Perhaps it was time, after all these years, to finally tell the tale.

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” she assured him.

“I never really knew my parents. My mother was very young when she died of rheumatic fever. I was barely three months old at the time. Three years later, my father was killed in a traffic accident. After that I was sent to live with family. My aunt and uncle were good enough people, I suppose—but they were too old and set in their ways. They did not know what to do with me, except put me to work on their farm. They did not beat me or abuse me—at least no more than was considered normal back then. They treated me well, but I was never anything more than an obligation to them. I proved to be a good student, but it was difficult for me to make friends. My aunt and uncle did not dance. They did not listen to music. They did not entertain. But they did go to Mass. It was there I met Father Raymond.

“Father Raymond looked at me and saw a lonely, friendless boy, and took me under his wing. That is, after all, a parish priest’s role—to be father to all children. It was he who encouraged my scholastic ability and arranged a scholarship to Loyola University. Over the years he showed me nothing but kindness and support, and when the time came, I decided I wanted to become a priest just like him.

“I wanted to help orphaned children find themselves, much as Father Raymond had helped me. My first few years in the priesthood were spent teaching in various parochial schools for the underprivileged. Then I was sent to St. Ivo’s Orphanage. It was not a particularly well-funded institution, and the Director’s duties were largely taken up with fundraising, so the priests and brothers who oversaw the welfare of the children weren’t overly supervised.

“I came to notice how the hands of one of the other priests, a Father Marten, seemed to linger when he touched some of the younger boys. He also had an extreme interest in making sure none of the boys’ underwear bore signs of “self-pollution.” Then one of Father Marten’s favorites—a six-year-old with the face of an angel—was adopted by a long-lost relative. Apparently the boy said something to his new family that aroused their suspicions, and the police were notified. The Director went to the bishop, who managed to smooth things over. However, Father Marten was removed from St. Ivo’s and, so I believed, the priesthood.

“I remained at the orphanage four more years, and then I was transferred to St. Levan’s. You can imagine my shock when I discovered Father Marten teaching there. I went to the Director of the orphanage, only to be accused of being a troublemaker. I tried my best to keep an eye on the children and see that no harm came to them—but in the end I failed.” He stopped and took a deep, shuddering breath and turned his face to the rafters. His eyes blinked rapidly for a few seconds as he struggled to regain his voice. “There was a boy named Christopher. He was four years old. He was an absolutely beautiful child. It broke your heart just to look at him.” The priest’s voice wavered. The memories were too much. Even after all these years, the pain was still sharp, the wound still fresh. He closed his eyes, but the image was still there, only now there was no whiskey to dull the edge. He wiped the tears from his face with a shaky hand. “I found him in the coat closet. His underpants were shoved so far down his throat he choked to death on them. I went looking for Father Marten. I found him in the basement, burning his clothes in the furnace. There was blood all over them. When I accused him of raping and murdering Christopher, the bastard attacked me with a coal shovel. Father Marten might have been a terror to small boys, but he was no match for a grown man. I got the shovel away from him…” The priest’s eyes narrowed and his face became rigid, like a man reliving the pain of unanesthetized surgery. “I knew that what he had done would be swept under the carpet, just like at St. Ivo’s. At best he would be defrocked. At worst they would simply ship him to a new parish, to start afresh. Either way children were in danger. Children like Christopher. So I beat his brains in with the shovel.

“The same veil of secrecy that protected Father Marten from the consequences of his actions also protected me. I was relieved of my duties and sent on a long sabbatical to an isolated sanitarium. After six months, I signed myself out and claimed the small inheritance my aunt and uncle had left me.

“I’d heard the stories about a ‘church of the damned’ while I studying at the seminary. It took me years of wandering to finally locate it, here in Deadtown. I figured if I belonged anywhere, it was here. Every night for the last twelve years I drink myself into oblivion, and every morning I pray for a sign from God that I have been forgiven. But I know it will never come, because I am not truly sorry for my trespasses. A priest is supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner. But as I stood listening to Father Marten try to explain himself—claiming that the boy had seduced him into sin—I felt no pity for his corrupted soul. There was nothing of God in me when I brought that shovel down on his head. I feel no joy for what I did, yet I feel no remorse, either.

“My soul is indeed stained with the blood of another, but not that of Father Marten. Every night for the last twenty years, when I close my eyes, I still see Christopher lying there, cold and dead. Sometimes I wake up, choking as he must have choked in those last horrid moments of life. Everything that made me a priest died that day. I’m one of the damned, now. That’s why I sought Deadtown out. This is where I belong.” He suddenly stood up from the pew, his face gray as clay. “Please excuse me. I need some air. I’ll be in the bell tower.”

Eddie scanned the alley, anxiously switching the cooler from his right to his left hand and back again. Tracking down the black-market blood dealer had taken up most of his day. The sun was already starting to set by the time he’d bought what he needed. Taking a stroll wasn’t the safest thing to be doing this time of night, but he had no choice. He’d promised to get her the blood, and he intended to stick to his word. Now all he had to do was make it to the church without getting nabbed by Esher’s goons. As he stepped out of the alley, a burly Pointer materialized from the shadows as if on cue, blocking his way.

“Yo! Look what we got here, cuz!”

A second, equally large Pointer emerged from the darkness behind Eddie. “Hey, old man! Don’t you know you’re under curfew?”

Eddie shifted uneasily as they moved to circle him. “On whose orders?”

“King Hell hisself: Esher, the fuckin’ Lord of Deadtown!” grinned the first Pointer. He jabbed a thick finger at the cooler Eddie was carrying. “Whatchoo got there, motherfucker?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in, I promise you—just let me go, okay?”

The second Pointer loomed closer, scowling menacingly. “He asked you what’s in the fuckin’ cooler, old man.”

As the gang-member reached for the cooler, Eddie sliced at his hand with his Buck knife, severing the bigger man’s thumb. Eddie shot past the Pointer as he clutched his spurting hand, only to be tackled by his body, who knocked him to the ground with bone-jarring force. He cried out as his collar bone snapped.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill your ass!” The Pointer with the missing thumb bellowed, kicking the old hippie hard enough to lift him off the ground.

A third gang-member came trotting up, drawn by the yells. “What’s goin’ on here?”

“This asshole fuckin’ cut me! That’s what’s goin’ on!” the wounded Pointer snarled, delivering another vicious kick to Eddie’s midsection.

“What’s this?” the newcomer asked, pointing to the cooler.

“Probably his hooch,” the one who did the tackling replied. “Ain’t nobody’ left in Deadtown but the hardcore alkies and junkies.”

“I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a drink,” the newcomer said, flipping open the lid. His look of anticipation was quickly replaced by one of revulsion upon spying the bag of human plasma inside. “Take him to Lord Esher. Now.”

Esher sat on his dais, chin on fist, and stared into nowhere. After long years spent scheming, plotting, and planning, he was finally the unchallenged ruler of Deadtown. Sinjon’s drug trade, along with millions upon millions of dollars, was now his. At long last he was finally the most powerful Noble in America. But instead of the joy that come from grinding an enemy into the dust, there was only emptiness and ashes. What good was his triumph without Nikola, or even Decima, to share in his success?

The fact that the traitor Sonja continued to elude capture made the situation all the more galling. He did not relish being played for a fool. The mirror-eyed bitch was going to pay dearly for what she cost him. There was a nervous cough, and he looked up from his reverie to frown at the Pointer standing in front of him, holding one of those plastic coolers that did double-duty as a lunch pail.

“We’ve captured a prisoner, milord—one we thought you should see for yourself.” The Pointer motioned to his companions, who dragged an older man dressed in a blood-stained tie-dyed t-shirt into the audience chamber. Esher recognized their captive as the same man who had rescued the boy. “We found this piece of shit breaking curfew. Look at what he was carrying on him,” the gang-member explained, handing over the bag of plasma.

Esher eyed the blood like a connoisseur studying a wine label, then turned his attention to his captive. “I told Sonja to destroy you. And yet here you stand before me. Tell me where she is, old man, and I’ll let you live.”

“Fuck off, asshole!” Eddie spat. “You’re not getting a thing outta me!”

Esher’s smile was as thin and sharp as a razor. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that, if I were you.”

Sonja sat propped in the church pew, staring at the shadows cast by the flickering light of the votive candles. It was strange, feeling yourself die one cell at a time. She wondered how long it would continue before her consciousness would finally be obliterated. Maybe it wouldn’t. Perhaps that was the curse of the undead—to die and remain aware the whole while, experiencing your own rot in full detail yet helpless to stop it. That was a cheery thought.

Suddenly the door that lead to the bell tower banged open and Father Eamon hurried back into the sanctuary, his face beet red. “They’ve got him!” he gasped. “I saw it from the belfry! They captured Eddie!”

“That’s it, then,” Sonja said, pulling herself up onto wobbly leg. “There’s no point in delaying the inevitable.”

“What are you doing?” Father Eamon asked as he moved to block her path.

“I’m going to help Eddie.”

“But you said you don’t stand a chance without blood!”

“I can’t sit here and let him die! Eddie risked his life trying to help me. Now it’s my turn. Please, get out of my way and let me do what has to be done,” she said as she pushed past the priest and staggered into the aisle. Squaring her shoulders against the pain, she took a step forward, only to collapse onto the floor.

Father Eamon knelt down, cradling her limp body in his arms. He gingerly removed the mirrored sunglasses, flinching at the sight of her blood-filled eyes with their elongated, reptilian-slit pupils. “You’re dying,” he said quietly.

“So I noticed,” Sonja whispered.

“You need blood.” He glanced up at the saints lining the walls, then at the cross suspended over the broken altar. There were no miraculous tears or dripping stigmata to be seen. But he no longer needed such crude signposts to show him the way. He calmly reached up and pulled the clerical collar from his from about his neck. “Take mine.”

Sonja’s blood-red eyes widened in horror. “Father, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Yes, I do,” he assured her as he pulled her close, lifting her head so that it rested on his shoulder like a sleeping child’s. “There is much I don’t know or understand, but I know one thing for certain: all that has gone before in my life was to bring me to this place, so that I would be the one kneeling beside you at this moment. No one else could make this sacrifice.”

Sonja closed her eyes, trying to blot out the sight of the veins pulsing in his neck. She could smell his blood, lurking just beneath his skin, and hear it rushing through his arteries. Her fangs ached to plunge into his bared throat and claim that which called to her.

“Don’t do this to me,” she whispered as she tried to pull free of his embrace. “Don’t make me kill you.”

“It’s okay, my child,” he replied. “I’ve been dead for years.”

She licked her lips, her tongue flickering across the skin of his throat. He tasted of sweat, dirt and humanity. She trembled as she felt her resolve give way to the voracious need within her. She opened her mouth wider, her fangs automatically unsheathing themselves from her gums, like the claws of cat.

Do it, the Other’s voice hissed inside her. We’ll die if you don’t—and then where will we be? Heaven? Hell? Or something even worse?

Father Eamon flinched as she penetrated him, then relaxed as the anesthetic in her saliva began to kick in. He could feel his blood being drained, but it was all very painless—even pleasant, kind of like the buzz from a bottle of whiskey. There was no fear, no anger, no hate—only the dreamy detachment that comes the split-second before falling asleep. He turned his gaze to the plaster saints and saw tears of milk and blood streaming down their cracked and peeling cheeks. Something fluttered in his chest, like a piece of paper caught on barbed wire, and he heard what sounded like the beating of muffled wings. He looked up towards the roof of the church and saw a small boy sitting on a rafter, surrounded by a host of white doves, kicking his tiny legs back and forth. Christopher smiled down at Father Eamon and waved.

Sonja licked the priest’s blood from her mouth. She could not remember the last time a kill had died so easily. Father Eamon’s pale, grizzled features seemed peaceful, almost beatific, in the flickering light from the votive candles. She could feel her body regenerating itself, her strength returning. She still wasn’t in peak condition, but there was no helping that. She was sound enough to go up against Esher, and that was all that mattered.

She got to her feet, carrying Father Eamon’s body effortlessly in her arms, and placed the priest’s body atop the altar, carefully folding his hands across his chest. She then looped his rosary about his neck and arranged the votive candles so that they formed the stations of the cross. Finally she took her switchblade and carved into the wood of the altar this epitaph: “Here Lies Saint Eamon: Protector of the Damned.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The House of Esher stood stark and alone amidst the rubble of Deadtown, its bulk silhouetted ominously against the rising moon. The graveyard quiet of its surroundings made it seem even more like a mammoth tomb, where the dead held sway. The only sign of life was a handful of guards loitering on the curb, smoking cigarettes and talking among themselves in hushed voices.

Sonja watched them from the shadows, pondering her options. Was it worth going into overdrive in order to gain entrance to the stronghold? Ghostwalking ate up a lot of energy reserves, and she didn’t have much to spare. Besides, the moment she set foot overs the threshold, Esher would know she was there, and the element of surprise would be over before it could begin. She would be better served sneaking in via the catacombs.

Sliding through the shadows, she located one of the open cellars that pock-marked the area like bomb craters. A rickety wooden staircase that was little more a ladder lead down into the darkness. Barely twenty feet later, she was greeted by a horrific smell. With a start, Sonja realized that she was climbing down into a mass grave, filled with the dead bodies of those who had died in the riots.

Upon reaching the bottom, she searched among the fly-blown corpses until she found a trapdoor the size of a manhole cover. Such a small tunnel probably meant it wasn’t frequently used, which suited her just fine. She lifted the trapdoor and saw that the walls of the tunnel were not shored up, looking more like it had been clawed out of the earth by a huge burrowing creature some kind. She dropped down on her belly and began worming her way forward on her elbows, praying she wouldn’t come face-to-face with one of Esher’s brood crawling in the opposite direction.

After several long, claustrophobic minutes, she finally spotted something resembling light up ahead. Carefully edging herself forward, she found herself at the far end of the subterranean vault that served as the barracks for Esher’s followers. Luckily, the room appeared to be empty. She quietly slipped out of the tunnel, knocking the dirt from her hair and clothes with a couple of brisk swipes of her hand.

As she made her way through the central barracks, a thought entered her head without warning and proceeded to claw at the inside of her skull, like an animal trapped in a cage. A sourceless voice whispered in her ear, assuring her that is she did not hurry to the audience chamber, something horrible was going to happen. Her heart began to race and the palms of her hands started to sweat. She realized was she was experiencing was Esher’s will trying to work its way into her mind, replacing her thoughts with his own, like ivy breaking down a wall by forcing its tendrils between the bricks and mortar. Any other vampire would have been tricked into mistaking Esher’s inner voice for their own thoughts and acted on them without question. Then again, most vampires hadn’t spent the last forty years wrestling their own inner demon. If anything, decades of combating The Other had given her an edge against such tactics. Still, if Esher wanted her to come to the audience chamber so badly, the odds were good that Eddie was there as well. Why not give the bastard what he wanted? Let the bastard think he was pulling her strings—he’d find them wrapped about his throat soon enough.

“Ah! Look who’s in the House!” Esher said with a mocking laugh as Sonja strode into the audience chamber. The Noble reclined on his throne, one boot casually resting on Eddie’s neck. The old hippie’s beard was stained bright red and his left eye was so swollen it couldn’t open, but he at least seemed to still be breathing. Vampires and human gang-members, greatly reduced since the uprising, crowded the room, their eyes glittering like those of rats in a sewer.

“Let him go, Esher,” Sonja said. “You’ve got me, now. That’s what you wanted, right? Eddie’s nothing to you.”

“On the contrary,” Esher grinned, nudging his captive with the toe of his boot. “He is the brat’s protector; therefore he must know where Nikola is.”

“Nikola’s dead,” Sonja replied tersely. “She died in the Black Lodge.”

“Don’t piss on my head and tell me it’s raining, bitch!” Esher snarled. “I now realize my beloved’s abduction was your doing, not Sinjon’s. If Nikola was in the Black Lodge, the old reptile would have gladly tossed her off the balcony to save his life. I see now that you deliberately maneuvered Sinjon and myself into a full-fledged brood-war. What where you planning? Did you think we would destroy one another so you could take over Deadtown unopposed?”

“You wouldn’t understand my motivations even if I told you,” she replied with a bitter laugh. “But you’re right about one thing—I came here with the express purposes of getting rid of you and Sinjon.”

Esher stood up, his boot-heel grinding into Eddie’s neck hard enough to make the old hippie cry out in pain. “Who are you, woman? Did the Synodus send you? Are you one of their assassins?”

Sonja gave a humorless laugh and spat on the ground. “I have no use for the Nobles and their constant bickering. What I do, I do for my own reasons.”

“Where is Nikola? Answer me, damn you!”

“She’s beyond your reach, now.”

Esher’s eyes widened in alarm. “You killed her?”

“So that’s where your mind automatically goes, huh?” she sneered. “Is that because it’s what you’d do if you were in my shoes?”

Esher’s assembled audience whispered among themselves, shifting about uneasily until their master gestured for silence with a sharp cut of his hand. “Big talk from a little traitor!” he said. “I demand that you tell me what you’ve done with my bride.”

“You can threaten me all you want, Esher. It’s not going to work.”

“You seem to forget that you have willingly partaken of my blood. That binds you to me and makes you my serf. And as your lord and master, I command that you bow down before me,” the vampire lord said, stabbing downward with his index finger.

Sonja could feel his will inside her, hammering away at her self-control. It felt as if an invisible hand had grasped the back of her neck and was trying to force her to her knees, but she set her jaw and refused to budge.

“I said bow!” Esher repeated, his eyes flashed angrily at her defiance, and he redoubled his efforts.

The surrounding audience echoed their master’s cry, their voices merging as one: “Bow! Bow! Bow!”

Sonja grimaced as her muscles spasmed and went rigid. Esher’s will burned inside her like a red-hot coal, worrying her mind with the savagery of a pit bull. She staggered under the psychic onslaught, but still managed to stand her ground, even though it felt as if she were playing tug-of-war with a length of piano wire.

“Defying me will do you no good, traitor!” Esher snarled. “Kneel before me, and at least I will grant you an easy death!”

One of Esher’s brood darted forward and grabbed Sonja by the hair. “You heard the Master!” he exclaimed. “Kneel, bitch!”

The vampire let go of Sonja’s hair as she drove her elbow into his vampire’s ribcage, then grabbed him in a headlock and gave it a quick 360 twist. His neck made a noise like fresh celery as his head came off in her hands.

“Head’s up!” Sonja said as she tossed the grisly trophy in his direction.

“You fool!” Esher snapped. “I didn’t need your help to bend her to my will!”

The severed head opened its mouth to apologize, but there were no lungs to fuel the larynx, so it could not speak. As its eyes darted about, a look of terrified realization crossed its face and the mouth opened wider, in a silent scream. Esher snorted in disgust and tossed it over his shoulder.

The assembled brood pressed forward, surrounding Sonja on all sides, a hungry gleam in their dark-adapted eyes as they licked their lips and tittered among themselves like bats.

“Get away from her!” Esher bellowed, booting aside his followers like a hunter kicking bothersome hounds off a wounded stag. “She’s mine!” The lesser vampires scuttled out of his way, lowering their heads in deference.

Esher began to cautiously circle Sonja like a wary panther, growling deep in his throat, his eyes burning like twin hellfires. Sonja pulled the switchblade from her pocket. Esher’s eyes widened in surprise and alarm upon seeing the silver knife, but stood his ground. The stranger darted forward, slicing at his chest, only to find he had sidestepped her with the grace of a matador caping a bull.

“You’re fast, traitor—but are you fast enough to escape magic?” he jeered, lifting a hand that glowed with crimson fire. Esher feinted, grabbing at her with burning fingers, only to have her pirouette like a jewel-box ballerina on a mirror lake, narrowly avoiding contact. She came out of the spin and slashed at the vampire lord, but he quickly whirled out of range of her weapon.

Esher’s followers watched from the sidelines, hooting and chanting as the two vampires danced their deadly challenge. Sonja darted forward and Esher moved to meet her, catching her right wrist in an iron-hard grip. She bit back a cry of pain as liquid fire shot up her arm. The pain was excruciating; it felt as if an acetylene torch was being held to her skin. She tried to wrench herself free of his grasp, but it was no good. Esher would not let go, no matter how she struggled. Her fingers spasmed and the switchblade fell to the floor with a clatter. Esher grinned and quickly kicked it out of reach. The members of his brood gasped and quickly moved out of the way, for fear of being nicked by the deadly silver blade.

“You are indeed strong and clever, traitor,” Esher said as he tightened his grip. “But you never stood a chance against me, just like that mincing old museum piece, Sinjon! You are nothing compared to me! Nothing!”

Sonja could feel her blood scalding her arteries, as if acid were sluicing through her veins. Tears of blood began oozing from her eyes, leaving crimson streaks in their wake as they rolled down her cheeks. Esher was going to boil her brain until it was pudding and her organs cooked and ruptured inside her like sausages in a microwave. It was a horrible way to die, even for the undead.

Sonja swooned and dropped to her knees as if felled with a hammer. Esher let go of her wrist and grabbed her about the throat, holding her head so that her blood-filled eyes could not look away from his own.

“And so you kneel before me! But what to do with you—? Shall I use your skull as a wine-cup? Or shall I dissect you, piece by piece? A kidney here, a uterus there—while letting you regenerate just enough so that you are forever on the verge of True Death, but never cross its threshold? Yes, that last one appeals to me. You have cost me much, traitor. It will take me years to find and train another lieutenant like Decima.” Suddenly a slow, evil smile spread across Esher’s face. “Yes, that’s it! You bear a close enough resemblance to her already; with a few dozen piercings, the physical transformation will be complete. You will drink of my blood until my will fills you like an empty vessel, and I will shape you in Decima’s image and call you by her name. In time, it will be as if Decima never died—and Sonja never existed!”

“Not that! Anything but that!” Sonja gasped.

Esher continued to grip her throat as the pulsing energy shrouding his hands flickered and died. He motioned to one of his nearby servants. “Bring me the dagger!” The lackey hurried forward with the same ritual knife Esher had used to open his veins during the unholy communion at the Dance Macabre. Esher held out his wrist and the servant obediently sliced into the exposed flesh, gasping in excitement at the sight of his master’s blood slowly welling from the fresh wound.

Esher pushed his bleeding wrist against Sonja’s lips, like a mother trying to get a baby to nurse. She shook her head and tried to pull away, but was held fast. “Take this, my blood!” he intoned. “Drink—and be damned!”

“Drink it! Drink it! Drink it!” the others chanted.

Sonja closed her eyes as she took Esher’s blood into her mouth, her face contorted in disgust. A few moment later, her grunts of protest morphed into moans of abandon as she reached up of her own volition to grab his wrist and pull him closer. Esher’s grin grew even wider. This was better than killing her. True Death was far too easy and swift. The complete and utter destruction of her identity, however, was a far more fitting punishment for one so arrogant. To turn such a proud, stubborn individual into a continuation of his faithful Decima was far more inspired. He’d gotten the idea from his own biological father, who had a habit of replacing his gun-dogs and wives with look-alikes whenever one or the other died, in order to create the illusion continuity.

As he began to feel light-headed, Esher moved to pull his wrist away, but Sonja’s grip tightened and she began draining the wound in earnest. A look of alarm rose on the vampire lord’s face as he attempted to pull away a second time.

“That’s enough!” he whispered.

Sonja opened her eyes, peering up at him over the rims of her sunglasses, but continued feeding. A mantle of purple-black light suddenly crackled into existence about her head and shoulders, like the halo of a fallen angel.

“Let go!” Esher barked, grabbing at her hair with his free hand. The dark energy flared and spat like an electric fence, causing him to jerk away. He stared in disbelief at his hand, which looked like he’d just stuck it in a deep-fryer. “Don’t just stand there!” he shrieked at his gathered followers. “Get her off me!”

The vampire who had sliced Esher’s wrist for him came forward, grabbing Sonja by the collar of her leather jacket. He raised the dagger in order to sever her spinal cord—the one sure way of disabling a vampire—only to spontaneously combust in a column of flame. The other vampires drew back, hissing in fear as they shielded their faces against the blaze, but it was to no avail. The burning vampire staggered into the crowd, igniting several of the brood with his death-throes. All the while, Sonja continued to feed on the Noble, whose hair was rapidly turning gray.

Esher gave a sob of pain and dropped to his knees, too weak to stand. Only then did Sonja finally break off her feeding.

“Oh, please don’t throw me in that briar patch, Br’er Fox!” she laughed as she got to her feet, wiping her lips on the back of her hand. “Anything but the briar patch!”

Esher tried to drag himself away, but he found he was far too frail to even move. Where once, minutes before, had been a powerfully built, virile man, now there was a rail-thin ancient with jaundiced, liver-spotted skin and thinning white hair.

“What are you?” he rasped with a voice as dry as Egyptian parchment.

“There’s more than one kind of vampire, you know,” she replied. “I’m the kind who feeds on the blood of vampires.”

Esher lifted a bony hand to his eyes to blot out the sight of his doom as Sonja pulled him into a brutal parody of a lover’s embrace, her face pressed close to his. He flinched at the sight of her exposed fangs.

“You should feel honored, Esher,” she smiled. “You’re only the second vampire I have consumed. My first was my own sire. And, I may add, you taste much better.”

“Please, let me go! I’ll give you anything you want!”

“Will you let Eddie leave Deadtown unharmed?”

“Yes! Of course!”

“Will you leave Nikola and Ryan alone?”

“I swear by my blood I’ll never seek her out again!”

Sonja loosened her grip, studying the vampire lord’s aged features. “You know what, Esher?” she said. “You’re one lying son-of-a-bitch.” Her fangs drove into his jugular like a tap into a keg. The blood that flowed from him was thick and dark and tasted sweeter than any she’d ever known. Esher flailed his arms and legs against her in a futile attempt to break free as his lips turned black and pulled away from his gums in a hideous rictus grin. His skin flaked away in large sheets, while his hair, nails and teeth loosened from their moorings and fell away like autumn leaves. Esher’s shrieks climbed into the ultrasonic register, until they sounded like the pips and squeals of a bat, as his eyes retreated into their sockets.

Sonja halted feeding to blink and look around at her surroundings. The interior of the audience chamber was ablaze, the tapestries that covered the walls inadvertently ignited by burning vampires. But the fire could not account for what she’d felt—as if The House of Esher had just shrugged.

“What’s going on—?”

“My magics—” Esher whispered, his voice that of a very old, very sick man. “My magics are tied to my life force … without me to sustain them, they can no longer keep the House stable…. You are standing in a house of cards … and you … have just removed … the king …”

The house shuddered again, and this time a two-foot-wide crack appeared in the floor of the audience chamber. Sonja let Esher drop and moved to retrieve Eddie, who lay unconscious at the foot of the vampire lord’s throne.

As she moved past Esher, his useless legs twisted beneath him like gnarled sticks, the Noble reached out and tried to grab at her pants leg.

“Don’t leave me here!” he begged. “Deadtown is yours! Just take me with you!”

“You can keep your fuckin’ Deadtown,” she replied as she tossed Eddie over her back in a fireman’s carry. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll show myself out.”

There was a rumbling from deep within the building and the House jerked as if it were being pulled in three separate directions at the same time. Sonja nimbly sidestepped a fissure that opened up underneath her, pausing only long enough to snatch up her dropped switchblade.

“No! Don’t leave me here alone—!” Esher cried, his voice lost in the cacophony of the House tearing itself apart. There was the sound of a metal cable snapping, and Esher looked up to see the stained-glass window suspended over the dais swinging back-and-forth overhead, like the pendulum from the poet’s story. His last thought, before the half-ton of metal and colored leaded glass came crashing down on his skull, was of Darcy.

Sonja kicked open the doors to the audience chamber and staggered into the hallway. If the House of Esher had been hell to navigate while its master was in control, it was now utter chaos. The walls were bleeding and the doors moved about on spindly, lobster-like legs, their knobs extended on long antennae. The carpet underneath her feet was made from fresh, hot tar. She gritted her teeth in pain and slogged onward, doing her best to ignore the things skittering about on the edge of her vision.

She rounded a corner and saw a clot of Pointers mired up to their waists in the hallway like roaches in a glue trap. She looked away as the corridor convulsed, slamming its hapless captives against the ceiling like a hydraulic press. Suddenly the floor beneath her feet was solid again, although now the carpet runner was writhing like an anaconda. She swore under her breath and tightened her grip on Eddie as she stepped up her pace. There was another housequake, followed by the sound of timbers giving way. A second later she narrowly dodged a rafter as it crashed its way to the basement. There was a gout of plaster and crumbling masonry, and suddenly she found herself outside without the aid of a door—the wall in front of her had simply disintegrated.

Sonja staggered across the street, fearful of being struck at any moment by a toppling chimney or buried under an avalanche of brick. Once she was safely away, she lowered Eddie to the ground and turned to watch the fall of the House of Esher.

She was reminded of a magic act she’d once seen where the magician had taken a cabinet the size of a car and repeatedly folded it until it was the size of a child’s suitcase—except that the magic cabinet hadn’t made a fraction of the noise as the House of Esher. The sounds of masonry being ground to dust and glass shattering did nothing to drown the screams coming from within the convulsing building. Although she glimpsed a couple of bloodied figures leaping from the upper windows to the rocky ground below, it seemed that most of Esher’s followers, both human and vampire, remained trapped inside. There was a long, guttural groan—like the song of a whale heard underwater—and the House of Esher finally disappeared in a mushroom cloud of grit and plaster dust. In its place was an empty lot. Sonja noticed that wherever the House had gone, it had apparently taken its catacombs with it, since the patch of ground beneath it was perfectly flat.

“Well, thank goodness that’s taken care of,” she muttered as she picked Eddie up again. The older man’s breathing sounded funny—she needed to get him to a hospital, and fast. She noticed the Batmobile sitting at the curb, and opened the driver’s door and scanned the interior. The keys were still hanging in the ignition. No doubt the driver was dripping off the ceiling in whatever hell-dimension the House had returned to. She opened the back door and carefully laid Eddie across the seat. The old hippie’s good eye flickered open and his body went rigid.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re safe now.”

“I didn’t tell him where they are,” Eddie mumbled through what was left of his teeth.

“I didn’t think you would,” she smiled.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Eddie lay in his hospital bed, his left leg freshly slathered in plaster and hanging suspended from a sling. His right shoulder blade and arm were also newly mummified, supported by a metal strut that held his arm out at a jaunty angle. His beard and hair had been washed clean of blood and vomit, and the swelling on the left side of his face had gone down enough so he could open his eye. He sat in the dark, sipping apple juice through a straw, watching the TV with the sound off. The curtain that separated his side of the room from that of his roommate’s was pulled shut, in a futile attempt at privacy.

“Eddie.”

“Jesus fuck!” he yelped, spilling his apple juice.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Sonja said as she stepped out of the shadows.

“At least I’m in the right place for a heart attack,” he muttered ruefully.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “What did the doctors say?”

“That I’m fuckin’ lucky I still have both eyes, for one thing. I’m also going to have to be fitted for dentures, but there’s no sign of brain damage. At least none they can relate to the beating, anyway.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I was mugged,” he said with a shrug. “Which is kind of the truth, once you think about it.” He tilted his head and fixed her with a quizzical look. “I wasn’t expectin’ to see you again. Why’d you come back?”

“I thought you might like something to read while you recovered.” She stepped forward and placed the massive Oxford English Dictionary on the night table beside him.

“Thanks. I appreciate the thought,” Eddie said with a crooked smile.

“You’ll need it once they discharge you. Deadtown is no more, Eddie. Don’t try to go back. In couple years it’ll be an urban shopping plaza or a new business development.”

“Where do you suggest I go?”

“I hear San Luis Obispo is nice.” The old hippie smiled, exposing his newly naked gums. “I gotcha. Thanks.”

As she turned to leave, Eddie called out to her one last time.

“Before you go—you mind telling me your last name?”

Sonja paused, her silhouette etched against the privacy curtain. It was too dark for him to make out whether she was smiling or not.

“It’s Blue. Sonja Blue,” she answered. “Goodbye, Eddie.”

The patient on the other side of the curtain groaned and muttered something in his sleep. Eddie glanced in his direction to make sure they weren’t being overheard. When he looked back, she was gone.

Sonja yawned, stretched, and cracked her knuckles while she steered with her knees. The Batmobile barreled down the highway like its proverbial namesake. She glanced into the rearview mirror, watching the lights of the city dwindle behind her.

Where to next?

She’d heard rumors about a vampire coven in Detroit, living in the rotting buildings and factories downtown. And there were some pretty gnarly stories coming out of New Orleans, about a nasty infestation in the abandoned neighborhoods left behind by Katrina. She decided she would pick her next destination in the usual way.

Without taking her eyes from the road, she popped open the glove compartment and fished out her Magic Eightball. After a vigorous shake, she flipped it over and waited for the twenty-sided die to float its answer through the murky blue dye. She grunted and returned the Magic Eightball to its compartment.

The Big Easy it is.

She punched the eject button on the Batmobile’s sound system and removed the rap CD, tossing it out the driver’s-side window. She then retrieved another CD from inside her jacket and deftly inserted it into the empty slot. The distorted shriekback of Diamanda Galas’ Madwomen With Steak Knives came pouring from the Batmobile’s suitcase-sized speakers.

At last, music she could relate to.

About the Author

Nancy A. Collins has authored over twenty novels and novellas and numerous short stories, and worked on several comic books, including a two-year run on Swamp Thing. She is a recipient of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Society Award, and has been nominated for the Eisner, John Campbell Memorial, and World Fantasy International Horror Guild Awards. Best known for her groundbreaking vampire series Sonja Blue, which heralded the rise of the popular urban fantasy genre, Collins is the author of the bestselling Sunglasses After Dark, the Southern Gothic collection Knuckles and Tales, and the Vamps series for young adults. Her most recent novel is Left Hand Magic, the second installment in the critically acclaimed Golgotham urban fantasy series. She currently resides in Norfolk, Virginia, with a Boston terrier.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Nancy A. Collins

Cover design by Kat Lee

978-1-5040-1419-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Dedication
- Author’s Note

- DEADTOWN

- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight

- A FISTFUL OF ROSES

- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen

- THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ESHER

- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-One
- Chapter Twenty-Two
- Chapter Twenty-Three
- Chapter Twenty-Four

- About the Author

- Copyright