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In the Blood

Nancy A. Collins

David Aaron Clark

1960-2009

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Epilogue

About the Author

Palmer

I am not now

That which I have been.

—Byron, Childe Harold

Chapter One

Where was she?

Palmer checked his cell phone for the fifteenth time in as many minutes. She was late. Again. He wanted to believe that it wasn’t deliberate on her part, but the truth was Lola enjoyed keeping him waiting. No, scratch that. She liked to keep him twisting on the end of a meat hook. The woman knew she had him: heart, soul and gonads.

Palmer knew Lola was bad news the moment she sashayed into his office, but that hadn’t kept him from falling hard and messy, like a jumper off the Empire State Building. She’d hired him to follow her husband, a well-to-do contractor named Samuel Quine, trying to get some dirt on him for a nice, juicy divorce settlement. It didn’t take long. Quine was seeing someone on the sly, all right. They met at a motel on the outskirts of town twice a week. It was all very discreet and proper, in a suburban middle-class kind of way. Palmer was all too familiar with the pattern. After all, he’d spent a good chunk of his professional life taking incriminating photos of unfaithful husbands and wives sneaking in and out of hot-sheet joints. What he couldn’t understand was why Quine needed to get it on the side when he was married to a woman as sexy as Lola.

Before Palmer could finish that train of thought, he was dazzled by the high beams from Lola’s candy-apple red Trans Am as it pulled into the deserted parking lot, Bon Jovi pumping out of the speaker system. Palmer grimaced. Lola had dreadful taste. Except for him, of course. She shut off the engine, returning the lot to shadows and silence, but there was still enough illumination from the distant streetlights for him to see her slide out from behind the wheel of her car. She was dressed all in red, from the ribbon wrapped around her ash-blond ponytail to the stiletto-heeled designer shoes that matched her miniskirt. Her fingernails and lips glistened as if she’d painted them with fresh blood.

Palmer’s anxiety and aggravation transformed itself into pure lust. It was like being high on a wondrous drug that made rational thought and common sense not only irrelevant, but completely impossible. He wondered if this was how male praying mantises felt during the mating dance.

“You got it?” Her voice was honey and whisky poured over crystal-clear ice. She raised her cornflower-blue eyes to his dark brown ones.

He nodded dumbly, his tongue turned into a useless wad of dry cotton. Palmer handed her a manila envelope full of pictures of Sam Quine and his mistress leaving their trysting place, as well as information detailing the days and times they kept their rendezvous.

Lola quickly scanned his notes, her mouth set into a predatory smirk. Palmer was startled by the cruelty he saw in her eyes, and then shamed by his instinctive revulsion. But he still couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just caught a true glimpse of the woman Sam Quine was married to.

“Lola, we need to talk.”

“I’d like to stay and chat, Bill. I really would. But there’s something I have to attend to.” She opened the carmine designer purse that hung from her shapely white shoulder as she spoke.

“Lola, it’s about us—”

“Now, where did I put that thing? Oh, here it is!”

“When will I get to see you again?”

Lola turned to face him, pulling a handgun from the tangled mess of cosmetics in her purse. “In hell,” she replied, leveling the weapon at his chest.

Palmer stared in mute horror at the piece of blue steel pointed at his heart. He recognized the weapon as his own, supposedly locked in the desk at the office. He disliked guns, but his clients expected it of him. Damn you, Bogart.

“But, Lola... I love you!”

Her painted lips pulled back into a grin that seemed to spread until it bisected her face. “That’s sweet of you to say. I love you, too, Bill.”

And then she shot him.

William Palmer woke in a puddle of sweat. Had he screamed? He listened to the other inmates in the city jail’s infirmary, but all he heard were the usual snores and farts. He uncoiled his rigid shoulder and leg muscles. He’d recently taken to sleeping with his arms crossed, corpse-style, across his chest. He sat up, dabbing at the sweat rolling off his brow with the edge of the bed sheet. His hands trembled and he wanted a smoke really bad. Hell, he’d even settle for one of those shitty big-house cigarettes, made from Bugler tobacco and a page from the New Testament. Regular cancer sticks like Camels and Winstons were hard to get, much less his preferred brand: Sherman’s.

That dream. That goddamned dream.

How long was it going to keep on? He’d been having the same dream ever since he woke up from his coma six weeks ago. The dreams varied widely, but they were essentially all the same: they involved him, Lola and his gun. Each dream ended with Lola opening fire. Sometimes the dreams were nonsensical, the way dreams normally are: he and Lola riding a merry-go-round in the middle of a forest, only to have her pull out the gun and shoot him. Others were so realistic he didn’t know it was a dream until he was jerked back into consciousness: he and Lola naked in bed, screwing away, but then she pulls the gun out from under the pillow, blowing his brains out just as he reaches orgasm…

Palmer squeezed his eyes shut, deliberately blocking the image. That one had been particularly bad. None of the dream-shootings were the real one, though. He guessed he should be grateful for small favors. It was bad enough remembering what had happened in the motel room without being condemned to relive it every night. His right hand absently massaged the scar on his chest that marked Lola’s parting gift.

She’d called late, babbling that she needed his help. She said she had finally decided to confront her husband. She went to the motel to surprise him with his mistress, but things had gone wrong. They got into a fight and Quine had gone crazy, threatening to kill her. She was locked in the bathroom, fearing for her life. Within minutes of getting her call, Palmer was in his car and on his way to the motel.

The door was unlocked when he got there. He wasn’t that worried about Lola’s husband. Quine was heavier than Palmer, but he was fifteen years older and not in the best of shape. He knew how to handle himself in a fight. But he was unprepared for the sight of Sam Quine sprawled naked across the motel room’s double bed, his brains splashed across the headboard and nightstand.

Palmer heard the bathroom door click open behind him. He turned in time to see Lola at the threshold, stark naked and holding a recently fired gun. His gun.

And then she fired.

Three weeks passed before he was able to stay conscious long enough to understand what was being said to and about him. Sometimes he wished he could return to the painless gray of twilight sleep and never come out. Anything would be better than the truth.

The whole thing was like a bad Mickey Spillane novel. It was typical of Lola, though.

The cops kept commencing on the half-baked nature of the scheme. Did she really think no one would question her version of what happened? Didn’t she know that forensics could read the splatter pattern left by her husband’s exploding head and triangulate the trajectory of the fatal bullet? Did she really think the police were that stupid? There was no way she could have pulled it off.

It didn’t make any sense unless you knew her. Or thought you did. Lola had never been one to concern herself with consensual reality. If she told him that her husband was a brute, a cheat and a liar, then that’s exactly what he was. That she refused to have sex with him for two years was unrelated to his infidelity. He was the one in the wrong, the one to be punished. If she told the police that she and her husband had gone to a certain motel to celebrate their anniversary, only to be the victims of an attempted robbery, then that’s what happened. Who could possibly imagine otherwise? It never once crossed her pretty, sociopathic mind that she would ever be a suspect.

That Palmer had survived the bullet she’d pumped into him was another contingency she was unprepared for. She kept insisting that she’d wrested the gun from her husband’s attacker and shot him in self-defense, but the police suspected Palmer’s wounding had more to do with a falling out between illicit lovers. When they produced evidence of a previous relationship between her and the private detective, it proved too much for her. Finding herself, for the first time in her life, in a situation where her sex appeal could not free her from the consequences of her actions, Lola took the easy way out with a fifth of Everclear and a bottle of sleeping pills, but not before she penned a venomous farewell note, implicating Palmer in Quine’s death.

‘It was all his idea. I didn’t want to go along with it,’ she lied from beyond the grave.

What she really meant was that it was all his fault for not dying. If he’d died like she had planned, everything would have gone off the way it was supposed to. Funny how he was finally becoming adept at understanding Lola, now that it was too late to do him any good.

As soon as the doctors proclaimed him fit, he would go before the judge. As far as the District Attorney’s office was concerned, it was a clear cut case of conspiracy to commit murder— it didn’t matter who, in the end, actually pulled the trigger. His public defense attorney told him there wasn’t much hope of avoiding prison.

Palmer craned his head so he could catch a glimpse of the sky through the heavily secured window over his bed. It was still dark out. He remembered his mother insisting, during the periodic hard times the family roller-coasted through, how “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” His mother was a good woman, bless her, but incapable of making a statement that wasn’t cobbled together from clichés.

His father had been a great one for clichés as well. His only attempt at handing paternal wisdom had been a nose-to-nose yelling match, where he’d told the fifteen-year-old Palmer: “Boy, if you don’t get your head outta your ass, you’re gonna find yourself up shit creek without a paddle!”

Thanks, Dad.

“Somebody here to see you, Palmer,” the orderly said.

Word had come through that morning that the doctors had okayed his transference from the medical ward of the jail. He was to be placed in the general population the next day. This had not come as welcome news.

“Is it my lawyer?”

“Beats me. The guy says he wants to talk to you.” The orderly jerked his head toward the single door that lead in and out of the recovery ward. A man Palmer had never seen before was standing at the check-in desk, an expensive attaché case in one hand. “You wanna see him?”

There was no privacy in the infirmary, but the patient-inmates had the freedom to turn away visitors if they chose.

“Yeah, send him over.”

Moments later the stranger stood at the foot of Palmer’s bed. He was a middle-aged man dressed in an expensive silk suit. His skin was pallid, even by today’s melanoma-conscious standards. He looked like a man who spent a lot of time indoors.

“Mr. Palmer? Mr. William Palmer?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Who wants to know?”

The stranger’s mouth smiled, but his eyes did not join in. “My name is Renfield. And I believe I can be of some service to you, Mr. Palmer.”

“That so? You a lawyer?” Palmer motioned him to take a seat in the metal folding chair next to the bed.

Renfield lowered himself into the seat. His movements were so rigid and stylized that he reminded Palmer of an animated mannequin. His mouth curled into another simulated smile. “Not exactly. I am a representative for a third party who has an interest in your case.”

“Look, Mac, I don’t know what it is you’re getting at. Say what you have to say and get it over with, okay?’

“You are innocent, are you not? Of the crime they accuse you of, I mean. You did not murder, nor did you conspire to murder, Samuel Quine. Is that right?”

“You got it.” Palmer wished he had a smoke. This pasty- faced suit was making him nervous.

“Would you care for a cigarette, Mr. Palmer?” Renfield asked, pulling a pack from his breast pocket. Palmer was surprised to see a flat, red-and-white case of Sherman’s in his pale hand.

“Yeah, don’t mind if I do.” Palmer said as he eagerly accepted one of the thin, unfiltered cigarillos. Smoking was, theoretically, forbidden, not only inside the infirmary, but the jail itself. Then again, so were gangs and rape.

“Go ahead, take the pack.”

“Uh, thanks.” He stared at the pack of Shermans, and then back at Renfield’s blandly smiling face. “How did you know I smoke this brand?”

“There is a lot we know about you, Mr. Palmer.”

Palmer looked up from his cupped palms as he lit his cigarette. “ ‘We’?”

“I refer, of course, to my employer.”

“Exactly who is this guy, and why is he interested in my well being?”

“That is not important, for now. What is important is that he can—and will, providing you agree to work for him—clear you of all charges. He can also get your Private Investigator’s license reinstated.”

“What is this, some kind of joke?” he frowned. “If so, it’s not a real knee-slapper.”

“Joke?” Renfield’s brow creased. “I never joke, Mr. Palmer.”

“Of course you don’t. Okay, let me rephrase myself: Who sent you, and what am I to him that he’s willing to pull those kind of strings? You’re not with the Mafia, are you?”

“I assure you, Mr. Palmer, my employer has no need of such petty power brokers. All I need to know is whether you are amenable to certain terms of employment in exchange for your freedom.” Again the smile-that-wasn’t-a-smile.

Palmer shrugged. “If your boss can spring me like you said, I’ll walk on my hands all the way to Timbuktu, if that’s what he wants.”

“I doubt that will be necessary. Then you accept my employer’s offer?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?”

Renfield nodded and closed his eyes. “It is done,” he said aloud in an odd voice. It sounded like a verbal signal. Palmer suddenly wondered if the creep was wired for sound. He felt the urge to grab the pasty little bastard and shake him by his lapels, but restrained himself.

Renfield stood up, carefully straightening the creases in his suit. “You will be hearing from us shortly. Good day, Mr. Palmer.”

“Yeah. Sure. Hang loose, dude.”

Palmer lay back in the bed, arms folded behind his head, puffing thoughtfully on his cigarette. Who the hell was this Renfield geek? He didn’t like the whey-faced bastard, but if he was telling the truth... Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he had shaken hands with the Devil.

Twenty-four hours after his initial meeting with Renfield, Palmer was standing on the street outside the Criminal Justice Building, blinking at the late afternoon sun. It had been months since he’d last been outside. He was still a bit weak from the gunshot wound that had creased his heart, but, all in all, he felt pretty damn good. Freedom was an amazing tonic.

I’ll be damned. The little wonk said he could do it, and whatever else he might be, he sure as hell isn’t a liar.

Palmer hefted the plain canvas tote bag the prison quartermaster had given him before jettisoning him back onto the streets. Inside were what few possessions he could call his own, salvaged from his apartment by his erstwhile public defender before the landlord changed the lock. It was hardly the most auspicious of new beginnings. Palmer glanced at his wristwatch. He’d received a note from Renfield just prior to his release telling him to wait on the corner. But for what?

A Mercedes, black and shiny as a scarab, pulled up to the curb, its windows polarized against prying eyes. The rear passenger door opened and Renfield leaned halfway out, motioning for him to climb in.”You seem surprised, Mr. Palmer.”

“Dazed is more like it. How did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Pull that trick with the DA’s office? They said something about Lola’s diary turning up?”

Renfield shrugged. “My employer is not without... connections, Mr. Palmer. Besides, what does it matter, so long as you are cleared?”

Palmer wanted to press the issue, but there was something in the way the other man smiled that made him keep silent. Renfield may have saved him from a life in prison, but that didn’t mean he had to like the guy. In fact, he felt uncomfortable simply sitting next to him. He couldn’t help himself; there was something inherently loathsome about the guy that he couldn’t quite peg.

“Where are we going?”

“We are going to meet my employer. He is as interested in seeing you face-to-face as you are in meeting him. You should relax, Mr. Palmer. It will be some time before we reach our destination.” Renfield leaned forward and opened the liquor cabinet built into the back of the front seat. “Help yourself.”

An hour later the limo coasted to a halt. The entire ride had been silent, save for the occasional rattle of ice as Palmer replenished his bourbon and coke. Meanwhile, Renfield had consumed nothing but bottled mineral water, and that sparingly. The driver moved from behind the wheel of the car and opened the passenger door. Palmer slid out after Renfield, feeling a bit tipsier than he’d realized.

He looked around and saw they were at the end of a long, crushed gravel drive, standing outside a spacious ranch-style house with handsomely manicured lawns and artfully concealed exterior lights. No doubt there was a nice big and a hot tub out back. Palmer followed Renfield up the front walk. Before they reached the porch, one of the shadows detached itself from the shrubbery and blocked their path.

The shadow was a big son of a bitch armed with an automatic weapon that looked like a child’s toy in his massive hands. He towered over Renfield and Palmer, his shoulders wide enough to block out the sky. Palmer guessed him to be close to seven feet tall, if not an inch or two over. And the bastard was ugly, too. The giant’s long, horse-like face was made even more unattractive by a complete lack of facial hair, including eyebrows and eyelashes. The guard said something to Renfield in a register so low it was close to sub-vocal.

“It’s all right, Kief. He’s been cleared.”

The guard didn’t take his eyes off Palmer as he made a strangely delicate motion with his free hand that was either sign language or his pantomiming breaking a twig.

Renfield shook his head. “No, that won’t be necessary. Like I said, it’s been arranged. Now, get on with your job. We must not keep the Doctor waiting.”

The guard nodded and returned to his post, but Palmer could feel the giant’s eyes on his back as they entered the house.

The living room was right out of prime-time soap, with a high ceiling, tastefully arranged Danish furniture and a handful of modern paintings scattered along the walls. It was obvious no one spent any time truly living there.

“This way.” Renfield led Palmer down a narrow hallway to the back of the house.

He stopped outside a door at the end of the corridor and rapped lightly.

“Bring him in.”

The room behind the door was lined with books and smelled of old leather and moldering paper. Seated behind an antique roll-top desk was a handsome middle-aged man, his dark hair touched with silver at the temples. Despite the dim wattage cast by the Tiffany lamp atop the desk, he wore a pair of green-tinted aviator shades.

“Ah, Mr. Palmer! Pleased to make your acquaintance at last!” The older man rose from his chair and extended his hand to the detective. He was dressed in crisp, white cotton pants, a white cotton shirt, loosened at the collar with the sleeves rolled up past the elbows, and a pair of old-fashioned red leather suspenders. Palmer winced at the strength behind the cool, dry grip.

“I have been told I have you to thank for arranging my freedom, Mister...?”

“It’s Doctor; Dr. Pangloss. Pleased to be of some service,” the older man grinned, revealing pristine bridgework that made Palmer’s nicotine-stained teeth look like a demilitarized zone. He motioned for his guest to take a seat, and then nodded to Renfield, who was still standing at the door. “That will be all for now. Have the cook prepare a tray for Mr. Palmer.”

Renfield nodded and retreated, leaving them alone.

“You must forgive me for not dining with you.” Pangloss smiled. “I’ve already eaten. May I offer you a drink?” He pulled a bottle of bourbon, its seal intact, from one of the desk’s pigeonholes. Palmer recognized it as his favorite brand, when he could afford it. “Oh, and help yourself to the cigarettes,” Pangloss added, nodding to a Chinese lacquer box resting on the table next to Palmer’s chair. The cigarette case was, like practically everything else in the room, an antique. Inside was his brand.

Palmer lit his smoke with a Fabergé cigarette lighter, pausing to admire how the light from the Tiffany lamp played across its enameled case. “Look, Dr. Pangloss… it’s not that I’m ungrateful for what you’ve done, but what the hell is going on? What’s so important about me that you would go so far as to spring me from jail?”

Pangloss flashed his teeth as he handed the detective a highball glass, but it was impossible to tell if the smile extended to his eyes. “I respect your forthrightness, Mr. Palmer. I really do. I appreciate men willing to speak their minds. The fact of the matter is, I am in dire need of your services.”

“That’s flattering, Doc, but there are hundreds of perfectly good private investigators in this country. Some I’ll even admit are better than me. I’m hardly Sam Spade, especially in light of what you know I’ve recently been through.”

“You underestimate yourself, Mr. Palmer. Or may I call you Bill?”

“I’d rather you call me Palmer. Same as everyone else does.”

“Very well, Palmer. You have tracked down missing people before, have you not?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ve traced a couple of skips and runaways. Most PIs have, sometime or another—it’s part of the job. Why?”

“Because there is someone I want you to find for me. A girl. It’s very important that she be located. I’m willing to pay you top dollar.”

Palmer sipped at the bourbon. It had been a long time since he’d been able to afford liquor this good. “Keep on talking, Doc. I’m listening.”

“It won’t be easy, I’m afraid. She doesn’t want to be found and has been highly successful at avoiding my previous field operatives. She recognizes them on sight and does her best to... avoid them.” Pangloss’s handsome face grew dark. “She’s a wild child, Palmer. She’s crafty, shrewd, fiercely independent, and more than a little crazy. She is also very dangerous. I’ll tell you that right now, just to make sure you know what you’re dealing with.”

“This ‘wild child’ you want me to find—what is her relationship to you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“She’s my granddaughter.”

Palmer knew that was bullshit the moment he heard it. Pangloss didn’t look old enough to have a grandchild capable of helling around. Then again, maybe he was older than he older. You never can tell, what with plastic surgery nowadays. And while Pangloss hadn’t exactly told the truth, Palmer had the feeling he wasn’t lying, either.

“I’ll pay you a thousand dollars a day, plus expenses. I trust that is satisfactory?”

Palmer nearly choked on the bourbon in his hurry to reply. “It’ll do.”

“There will also be a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus should you find her and successfully deliver this letter to her.” Pangloss pulled a legal-sized envelope from one of the desk’s pigeonholes. It was expensive cream stationery, stiff and heavy, and bore an old-fashioned wax seal on the back depicting a dragon looped around itself, eating its own tail.

“Can I ask a question? A purely hypothetical one, that is.”

“Go ahead.”

“What would you do if I decided not to take the case?”

“That assumes you have a choice in the matter, Mr. Palmer,” Pangloss replied. “I prefer keeping the fiction of free will intact, don’t you? I find my employees work much better when they believe they have some say in what they can and cannot do.”

Palmer stared at his benefactor’s pleasantly smiling face, the expensive liquor suddenly bitter in his mouth. For the first time Palmer noticed how long the other man’s fingernails were.

“I have confidence in you, Palmer. I’m sure you’ll be a great asset to our team. Now that you’re here, why don’t you make yourself at home? I’ve had the guest room especially prepared for your arrival, and I’ll see to it that cook gets your dinner to you. If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“There’s just one thing: what’s the name of this girl you’re looking for?”

“Her name is Sonja. Sonja Blue,” Pangloss replied as he opened the door to his study, revealing Renfield standing on the threshold. “Have a good evening, Mr. Palmer. And pleasant dreams.”

Chapter Two

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

Palmer stared blankly at the bellhop for a double heartbeat before answering. “No, I don’t think so.” He stuffed a couple of dollars into an outstretched white glove. The bellboy grimaced as if he’d just hacked a gob into his hand. Well, he wasn’t going to let some college student’s wounded sense of self-worth sour the pleasure of having his very own suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Palmer shrugged out of his jacket and plopped down on the couch in the sitting room. He rang up room service, courtesy of the good Dr. Pangloss. He wasn’t sure what his employer was a doctor of, but it sure paid well.

While he waited on his food to arrive, Palmer thumbed through notes scribbled during his time as Pangloss’s ‘houseguest.’ Is Sonja Blue really Pangloss’s grand-d? Is S.B. into illicit drugs? prostitution? Is Pangloss? What the hell am I doing here?

So far he’d failed to turn up answers to any of those questions, although putting a jet flight between himself and his mysterious benefactor made the last question seem far less pressing than when he first wrote it down.

He glanced at the stiff, cream-colored envelope jutting out of the breast pocket of his jacket. No doubt the letter would give him some answers, but that wasn’t how the game was played when he was on the field. Still, for a man supposedly desperate to locate his grandchild, Pangloss had been stingy with information about the girl. After some questioning, Palmer had finally learned that she might be traced through a boyfriend, if that was the proper word to use, of the name Geoffrey Chastain, but better known as Chaz. From what little Palmer had pieced together, Chaz was an expatriate Brit with a taste for hard drugs and unsavory sex partners. In short, your basic lowlife hustler.

Palmer scrounged a pencil from his hip pocket and added to his notes: Is Chaz S.B.’s lover? Connection/pimp?

He looked at the photograph of the elusive Chaz that Pangloss had given him before leaving. Odd that Pangloss should have a picture of the crappy boyfriend but not a single snapshot of his own granddaughter.

The picture looked like a passport photo, or maybe a mug shot. The man glowering at him from the other side of the camera was in his early thirties, his hair combed in a rebellious rooster tail. There was still a hint of masculine beauty in the shape of his cheekbones and the tilt of his eyes, but what attractiveness Geoffrey Chastain had once possessed had long been eaten away by his addictions. The drug hunger was obvious, even in a photo. Still, it was easy to see how a young, impressionable girl might fall under the spell of such a sleaze ball.

There was a knock on the door, and a neatly attired waiter rolled in a room service cart containing his steak. Extra rare. Palmer always prepared himself for a night on the prowl by eating his fill of red meat. It put him in the proper mood for the hunt.

“You know this guy?”

It was roughly the four hundredth time Palmer had asked the question that night. His feet were tired and his bladder ached from too many beers.

The man with the anarchy symbol chalked across the back of his black raincoat glanced first at Palmer then the snapshot. He took a swig from his beer and shook his head.

“Sorry. Can’t help ya.”

“How about you? You know this guy?”

The slightly built youth seated on the opposite side of the anarchist craned his head over his companion’s shoulder in order to look at the photo of Chaz.

“He don’t know him, either,” snapped the anarchist in the raincoat. “He don’t know nobody I don’t know, do ya?” he told the twink seated next to him.

The youth cringed, smiling nervously at this friend. “Course not, Nick. I don’t know nobody.”

“Fuckin’ A you don’t.”

Palmer cursed under his breath and headed for the men’s room. This wasn’t the first time he’d run into such aggressive ignorance. He’d come close to getting somewhere at least twice, only to have the parties in question clam up on him. As he relieved himself at the urinal, he heard the rest room door open and close behind him.

“Hey, mister?” Palmer recognized the voice as belonging to Nick the Anarchist’s companion.

“What is it, kid?”

“I know that guy. The one in the picture.”

“Yeah? Then what’s his name?”

“Chaz. He’s from England.”

Bingo, Palmer smiled to himself. “So how come your friend out there didn’t want you talking to me?”

“Nick’s just jealous, that’s all,” the boy giggled. “He and Chaz crossed swords a couple of times, so to speak.”

Palmer shook off and made himself presentable before turning around. The kid couldn’t be more than seventeen, his strawberry blonde hair worn in a Bieber cut that made him look even younger. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Terry.”

“Look, Terry, do you know where I could possibly find this Chaz? I’ll make it worth your while...” He produced a twenty from his pocket, holding it up so the boy could see it.

It was obvious the boy was interested, but his eyes flickered away whenever Palmer tried to look him in the face. “Is this Chaz a friend of yours? Are you afraid you’ll get him in trouble by talking to me?”

Terry snorted in amusement. “Chaz? A friend? That creeper? Nah, no one’s seen him in almost a year. Not since what happened to the Blue Monkeys.”

“The Blue Monkeys?”

“Yeah. This gang Chaz used to hang with. Bunch of real hard-asses. Used to dye their hair blue. He was friends with ‘em...but they only hung with him for the drugs he always had on him.”

“Where can I find these Blue Monkeys?” Palmer asked as he handed Terry the folded twenty dollar bill.

“You can’t,” he replied as he quickly pocketed the money.

“What do you mean?”

“They’re dead.”

“Dead?”

“Well, not all of them. But enough were killed off that it deep-sixed the gang.”

“What happened?”

“No one’s real sure. It got hushed up pretty quick. But there was this gang war, or something, in the back of some bar. Those that weren’t killed got crippled up bad. You could ask Jimmy.”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“That was the kid Chaz was fooling around with. He was the only one that didn’t get killed.”

“Where can I find him?”

Terry grinned and stuck out his hand, like a kid asking his father for the keys to the car. “That’s worth more’n a twenty, dude.”

“Mrs. Eichorn?”

The woman peering at him from the other side of the burglar chain scowled at him, as if deciding whether she made a mistake opening the door. “Whatcha want? You from th’ Welfare Department? If so, it’s too late for a wellness check!”

It had taken him a couple of hours to find the right house, as Terry’s instructions had been off by a few blocks. It was long past Palmer’s supper time and his scar was giving him trouble. He’d been forced to climb five narrow, badly lit flights of stairs, the smell of human piss and old garbage pungent enough to make his gorge rise.

“Mrs. Eichorn, do I look like a fuckin’ caseworker?” he snapped, unable to hide his temper.

Apparently there was no such thing as a rhetorical question as far as Mrs. Eichorn was concerned. She quietly took in Palmer’s close-shaved temples and narrow goatee, lingering on his wavy, gray-shot hair, which was combed straight up from his head, a holdover from his days, decades gone, spent in the mosh pits, before finally shaking her head ‘no’.

“I’d like to talk to Jimmy, Mrs. Eichorn. Is he in?”

Mrs. Eichorn blinked in surprise. “Yeah, he’s here. He’s always here. Whatcha want with my Jimmy?”

Palmer slid a crisp twenty through the crack in the door. “I just want to talk to him, ma’am.”

Jimmy’s mother hesitated then closed the door, taking the twenty with her. A second later the door reopened, allowing Palmer a better view of both her and the apartment. Mrs. Eichorn was an unsmiling woman with pale, washed-out hair, pasty skin, and eyes so light a shade of blue they seemed to lack any color at all. Palmer was reminded of a photograph left to bleach in the sun. Deep lines creased the corners of her mouth, which was painted with a purplish-red lipstick. She wore a much-washed waitress’s uniform with the name “Alice” stitched across the bosom in red thread. The few items of furniture in the living room looked as worn and poorly used as their owner.

“Whatcha want with my Jimmy?” She asked as she pulled a filtered cigarette from her apron pocket. Palmer wrinkled his nose in distaste. Funny how other people’s smoking got on his nerves. “You better hurry it up, whatever it is. I gotta leave for work in a few minutes.”

“Mrs. Eichorn, was your son a member of a gang called the Blue Monkeys?”

The look she gave him was hard enough to cut glass. “You a cop? None of that was his fault, y’ know.”

“No, ma’am, I’m a private investigator. Al I know is that there was a gang war-”

Mrs. Eichorn snorted smoke from her nostrils. “Massacre is a better word for it.” She gave him another look, this one not quite as hard as the last. “You’re not from around here, are ya? Shoulda figured when you asked if Jimmy was in.” The creases at the corners of her mouth deepened.

“Can I talk to him?”

“You can try.”

She led him down a narrow, unlit hall and opened a door with a Metallica poster tacked on it. It was dark in the small room, although enough illumination spilled through the window facing the street to allow Palmer a quick glimpse of the narrow bed in the corner and heavy metal posters plastered on the cracked and peeling walls. Jimmy Eichorn sat in a wheelchair, staring at the world beyond his windowsill.

“I left the room the way he had it.” Mrs. Eichorn’s voice dropped into a lower, softer register, as if she was in church. “I think it makes him happy.” She went and stood beside her son’s wheelchair, one hand absently stroking the back of his head. “The blue’s almost grown out. I hated it when he dyed it that crazy color. He always had such pretty hair, don’t you think so?”

To Palmer’s eyes, Jimmy’s hair was the same mousy non-color as his mother’s. The boy slumped in the wheelchair looked to be eighteen years old, although his slack features made him seem even younger. He was dressed in a pair of pajamas, a blanket draped over his lap. Jimmy ignored the adults standing to either side of him, his attention fixed on the street below.

“Jimmy? Jimmy, look at me, sweetheart.”

Jimmy took his eyes away from the lamppost across the street and tilted his head in order to stare at his mother. After a couple of seconds his lips pulled into a smile, drool wetting his chin. He reached up and clasped his mother’s hand. Mrs. Eichorn smiled indulgently and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

“Jimmy? This nice man wants to talk to you.”

The boy’s eyes flickered toward the window then shifted to Palmer. They were the eyes of a preschooler, wide and clear and uncertain of strangers.

“Go ahead, darling. It’s all right.” Mrs. Eichorn said, squeezing her son’s hand.

Palmer pulled the photo out of his jacket and held it up so the boy could see it. “Do you know where I can find this man, Jimmy? Do you know where Chaz is?”

A muscle in Jimmy’s face jerked. Palmer couldn’t tell if the boy had shook his head “no” or suffered a muscle spasm. Before he could press the issue, Jimmy gave out with a weird, high-pitched squeal and began to twitch. Palmer stepped back in disgust as the boy voided his bowels. Jimmy’s eyes rolled in their sockets and then glazed, staring at some unknown, fixed point.

“Get out!” snapped Mrs. Eichorn.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—”

“Just get out! I can’t deal with him with you in the room!”

Jimmy began to claw at his own throat, as if trying to pull an invisible attacker from his windpipe. Palmer glimpsed what looked like puncture marks in the shadow of the boy’s chin before his mother forcibly propelled him out of the room.

He made his way back to the Eichorns’ drab front room, listening to the mother soothe her son. Palmer looked down at his hands and noticed they were shaking. A few moments later

Mrs. Eichorn returned, lighting up yet another cigarette. Her hands were trembling as well.

“He was such a happy baby. He used to laugh like nobody’s business,” she said wistfully. “His daddy thought the world of him, because of that laugh. He stayed around a couple of years longer than he would have if Jimmy had cried like most babies, I guess. Jimmy was just five when he run off. That’s when things changed. I was just fifteen when I had him. What did I know about bringing up a kid, right?” She looked at the cigarette in her hand then glanced at Palmer, as if daring him to say otherwise. With a start, he suddenly realized this hopeless, washed-out woman was younger than him. “It’s not my fault he got like this... someone did that to him. He wouldn’t be like that if he hadn’t been with the gang that night. I asked him to quit the gang, but he wouldn’t do it. He said being a Blue Monkey was important to him than anything. He was proud of being a Blue Monkey.” She shook her head in disgust. “I told him that night I didn’t want him hanging around that bar with those scum. I told him that if he went there he better not come home. And you know what he did? He cursed me out! His own mama! And then he went anyway.” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, but her cheeks remained dry.

Mrs. Eichorn... I’m sorry; I didn’t realize my questioning your son would... upset him like that.”

“No way you could know, mister. It’s funny what sets him off sometimes. But there was no need to show him that picture. I can tell you where to find Chaz.”

“You know who he is?”

She snorted again, shooting smoke from her nostrils like a dragon. “I knew him. Jimmy brought him by once or twice. I figured him for a dealer. He’s dead. Died the same night the Blue Monkeys got into trouble.”

Upon hearing of Chaz’s fate, Palmer’s heart began to sink. “How’d he die?”

“I heard a rumor he was bumped off. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true. Chaz liked to cross people just for kicks.”

“Mrs. Eichorn, this is real important: Did Jimmy ever mention if Chaz was traveling with a woman?”

She shook her head. “Not that I recall. But Jimmy and I didn’t exactly talk a lot at that point.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Eichorn. I don’t want to delay you anymore than I already have. I appreciate everything you’ve been able to tell me,” he said, slipping a couple of fifty-dollar bills into her apron pocket.

“You know something?” she said as she opened the door for him. “It’s funny, but, in a way, I got what I wanted. I got my little boy back. Don’t you think that’s funny?”

Palmer simply nodded and hurried down the stairs, pausing on the third landing to pop a pain pill. By the time he reached the street, his ribs no longer felt like they were being cracked open with a lobster mallet. He did not look up to see if Jimmy was still keeping watch.

That night Palmer dreamed he was in a wheelchair, being pushed down a long, poorly lit corridor. The wheelchair needed to be oiled and squeaked whenever it moved. Everything seemed so vivid, so real, at first Palmer thought he was back in the infirmary. Confused, he twisted around to find out who was propelling the wheelchair. Lola smiled back at him, looking sexy and menacing in her starched white nurse’s uniform. Palmer was acutely aware of the erection tenting his hospital johnny.

“Did you miss me, darling?” asked Lola, her lips painted the color of fresh blood.

He hated to admit it, but he did miss her, no matter what she’d done to him. It made him feel stupid, powerless and degraded, but his dick was hard enough to cut diamonds. “Yes. Very much.”

“I missed you, too,” she smiled. “But I won’t this time!”

Lola halted the wheelchair at the top of a flight of stairs that seemed to stretch, Escher-like, into another dimension. Palmer’s head began to swim. He tried to stand up, but his arms and legs were strapped to the wheelchair. He twisted his head around, hoping to catch another glimpse of Lola. Instead, he found himself staring down the bore of his own gun.

He knew then that he was dreaming, and knew what would happen next. He also remembered an old wives’ tale—or was it a disputed fact?—that if you dreamed you were killed, you died in your sleep. Surely even an imaginary Lola couldn’t miss at this range.

Palmer threw himself headfirst down the warped, endlessly replicating stairwell ahead of the gunshot. Miraculously, the wheelchair remained upright as he caromed off gothic arches and past half-glimpsed crumbling facades. He could hear Lola shrieking obscenities from the top of the stair, accompanied by the sound of receding gunfire. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but at least it was away from Lola, with her bleeding mouth and stolen weapon.

For a brief, giddy moment, Palmer knew what it was like to be free. Then he saw the massive brick wall blocking his way. And in front of the wall, standing in a policeman’s firing stance, both hands wrapped around the handle of the gun, was Lola.

“Fooled you!”

Palmer looked at the rows upon rows of cold marble and granite then back at the map the cemetery’s caretaker had given him. According to it, Geoffrey Chastain, better known as Chaz, was buried in Sector E-7. Most of the headstones in the area were newer, the names and dates still sharply defined and easy to read. It would be several decades before the wind and the rain made the inscriptions as vague as those on the older stones.

It was early February and frost crunched under his heels as he made his way among the stones. Palmer was cold, despite his anorak, and his mood had not been helped by the nightmare that had jerked him awake, sweating and shivering and reeking of piss, at four that morning. Since then he’d been unable unwilling to go back to sleep, and his surgery scar throbbed like a bad cigarette burn.

He rechecked what little information he’d been able to get from the caretaker’s files as he trudged along on his search. Chaz’s plot had been paid for in cash by an anonymous benefactor. According to the records, he had originally been interred in Potter’s Field, then dug up and replanted in a proper grave, complete with headstone, a couple months later. Palmer was certain Sonja Blue was behind Chaz’s postmortem change of address. But why? Was it out of guilt? Sense of duty? Love?

He looked down to find that his shoes had become entangled in the faded remains of a funeral wreath. To keep from falling, he leaned against a nearby tombstone to disentangle himself. Once he succeeded in freeing his feet, he turned around and realized that he had been resting his butt on Chaz’s monument. Palmer stepped back and stared at the nondescript granite marker. All it said was: GEOFFREY ALAN CHASTAIN. There was no other information, sentiment or religious symbol on its chill face, not even the year of his birth and his death.

Palmer cursed himself, the self-deprecations rising from his lips in puffs of steam. What had he expected to find out here in the first place? The missing heiress’s forwarding address chiseled into her dead lover’s tombstone?

Then he saw the flowers. At first he thought they were part of the same wreath he’d originally tripped over; then he realized what he first thought were long-dead flowers were relatively fresh black roses. He picked up the bouquet from its resting place and set it atop Chaz’s grave. He handled the bouquet gingerly, as were full of thorns. For the first time in days, he allowed himself a smile upon seeing the florist’s name was stenciled onto the broad, flat ribbon wrapped about the bundled stems.

As he pulled the ribbon free of the dozen black roses, one of the thorns bit into the meat of his thumb. He stared at the bead of blood—as shiny and red as a freshly polished ruby—for a long second before bringing it to his mouth. As he sucked at his wound, he glanced up and saw a gaunt, haggard-looking man dressed in an unseasonably light jacket watching him from a few yards away, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, the odor of burning clove carried on the crisp morning breeze. But when Palmer looked again, the man was gone, although the scent of his cigarette still hung in the air.

Palmer was sure he’d seen the stranger’s face before. Was it possible he was being followed? Pocketing the florist’s ribbon, he turned and hurried back towards the gates of the cemetery. He wondered where the man could have gone so quickly. Even if he wasn’t spying on him, Palmer wondered how the stranger could tolerate hanging around a graveyard on an overcast February morning in nothing warmer than a silk jacket.

He suddenly stopped and reached into his anorak and pulled out the old snapshot that Pangloss had given him of Chaz. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back and his scar began to tighten. He told himself it was the lack of sleep making him see things.

Even though it was a perfectly rational explanation, it didn’t make him feel any better.

“Yeah, that’s ours, awright,” said the florist, studying the length of faded yellow ribbon Palmer handed him.

“I was wondering if you might be able to help me find out who placed the order.”

“Look, buddy, we sell a lot of flowers...”

“What about black roses? You sell a lot of those?”

The florist pulled his bifocals down a fraction of an inch and squinted at Palmer. “Black roses, you say?”

Palmer nodded. He was on the trail, he knew it. He could feel the familiar, almost electrical thrill of connections being made, invisible machinery dropping into gear. “That’s right. A dozen of them, delivered to the Rolling Lawn Cemetery.”

The florist moved over to the shop’s computer. “Deceased’s name?”

“Chastain.”

The florist tapped on the keyboard. “Yeah, I remember filling that order, now. Customers usually don’t order roses for grave decorations, outside of Mother’s Day. Black roses are even rare still—especially this time of year.”

“I take it they’re expensive.”

“You could say that,” the florist replied drily. He pointed at an entry on the computer screen. “Says here it was a phone order. Long distance. Paid for it with a credit card.”

“Could I see that information?”

The florist shook his head. “I don’t know about that. Sharing customer info ain’t good for my business.”

“I understand. Say, how much for one of those thingies over there?” Palmer pointed to a large floral display shaped like a horseshoe, with GOOD LUCK spelled along its rim in white carnations.

“That runs around two hundred bucks, depending on where you want it delivered.”

“I’ll take one,” Palmer said, peeling twenties from the roll in his pocket.

“In that case, sir, the order for the black roses was placed a week ago and was paid for by Indigo Imports of New Orleans.”

Palmer could feel it coming together. For the first time in his professional life he was on a real case, like the ones Sam Spade and the Continental Op solved; the kind that cloaked his profession in glamorous clouds of cigarette smoke, whiskey fumes and gunpowder. The years spent staking out no-tell motels with a camera in his lap seemed to melt away, reviving the romantic at his core, the one he’d thought died long ago.

As he headed for the shop door, the florist called after him. “Where and when would you like the good luck wreath delivered, sir?”

“Send it to the same place the black roses went. There’s no hurry.”

Chapter Three

When Palmer informed Pangloss of his destination, the good doctor assured him Renfield would see to his airfare and accommodations. When Palmer pointed out that flights into New Orleans during Carnival were booked solid weeks in advance, not to mention the hotels, Pangloss merely laughed and said there was nothing to worry about. He kept an apartment in the French Quarter, away from the heavily trafficked tourist areas, but still close to the action. Pangloss said he would call the housekeeper and make sure it was aired out in anticipation of his arrival.

Palmer arrived late Sunday evening to find the city swarming with drunken, raucous merrymakers. He was surprised when Renfield answered the door at the address Pangloss had given him.

“You’re here,” was all the pale man said in way of greeting, stepping back into the hallway to allow Palmer entrance.

“Doc didn’t say anything about sending you to keep tabs on me.”

If the other man noticed the barb, he ignored it. Renfield pointed to the staircase, curled inside the house like a chambered nautilus. “Your room is on the second floor. Third door to the right.”

“I thought Doc said he only kept an apartment here?”

Renfield shrugged. “In a way; he owns the entire building.”

Palmer’s quarters were quite spacious, consisting of a bed-sitter, a sizable bathroom complete with a cast-iron tub, and a kitchenette furnished with a stocked refrigerator and a microwave. There was also a flat screen TV, a home theater system and a wet bar. The bedroom offered a view of the patio and what had once been the slave quarters, and the faint reek of vegetable decay rose from the garden below.

The sitting room had a wrought iron balcony that overlooked the street, empty now except for the occasional passing mule buggy and cruising taxi. As he stood savoring his cigarette in the pleasant evening breeze, Palmer could hear Bourbon Street—its constant hubbub blurred and muted, but still distinct in the otherwise quiet neighborhood. Every now and again a drunken celebrant would shriek with laughter, the echoes losing themselves among the ancient buildings.

Palmer experienced a slight twinge of unreality, as if he were dreaming and aware of dreaming at the same time. When he had left for New Orleans that morning, there was still frost on the ground and in certain alleys where the shadows rarely part, there were still hard crusts of snow and ice to be found. Now he was standing in his shirtsleeves, taking in the fragrant subtropical night air while listening to the sounds of Carnival.

He contemplated going out and joining the party, but jet lag claimed him. He fell asleep splayed across the massive four-poster, wisps of mosquito netting fluttering in the breeze from the open windows.

He dreamed that he woke up. In that dream, he lay in bed for a few seconds, trying to place where he was and what he was doing there. When he remembered, he sat up, rubbing his eyes. It was still dark outside; a pale sliver of moonlight fell through the French windows. There was a table and chair near the foot of the bed. Palmer’s dream-self was aware that someone—or something—was seated in the chair, watching him. He could see enough to tell his visitor was female and he instinctively put his hand to the scar over his heart, fearing it was Lola. Palmer wanted to stand up and walk toward the mysterious figure, but he couldn’t move.

Who are you?

The dream-woman did not answer but instead got to her feet. She stood in deep shadow, fingering the length of netting draped across the footboard. She moved again, and a spear of moonlight struck her face, but all Palmer could see was his own perplexed frown, reflected in miniature. The shadow-woman smiled, revealing teeth too white and sharp to belong in a human mouth.

That’s funny; I was going to ask you the same thing.

It was her. The one he’d traveled so far to find. Palmer had never seen her photo, much less heard her voice, but he was certain that the woman standing at the foot of his bed was Sonja Blue. Before he could say anything, her attention was drawn to the balcony.

Here? No, not here. But close. On its way.

She sprinted for the French windows. Palmer opened his mouth to shout a warning that they were two stories up, but nothing came out. He felt embarrassed for trying to warn a dream about breaking its legs. When the woman reached the open windows, she seemed to expand and elongate at the same time, stretching like a spaceship achieving light speed, then shot headfirst into the early morning sky.

Palmer was suddenly aware that he was cold and sweating and shaking like a malaria victim. His scar began to burn like a hot wire pressed against his chest. That’s when Lola popped up from behind the footboard like a malignant jack-in-the-box, the .38 leveled at his heart.

“Surrr-prizzze!”

He was unable to control himself this time and woke screaming, his fingers clawing at the scar.

There was no listing for Indigo Imports in either the New Orleans Yellow or White Pages. Still, if you wanted a credit card, you had to have a phone. It was a fact of life. It was probably an unlisted number, but there was always the chance she relied on a message service to relay her calls. And those were listed.

Two hours and twelve answering services later, he called Telephones Answered, Inc. and asked to speak to the head of Indigo Imports.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this is their answering service. Would you like to leave a message?”

He had her. He fought to keep his voice from betraying his excitement. “Yes. Tell her William Palmer called. It’s very important that she contact me,” he said, and gave the operator his cell number.

“Very good, sir. I’ll make sure she gets the message.”

The call came at six that evening. He’d fallen into a light drowse, helped by a couple of shots of expensive bourbon he’d found in the wet bar, and nearly fell off the couch attempting to answer the phone before it rolled over to voicemail.

“Hello?”

There was silence on the other end of the line, then a woman’s voice. “What do you want of me, Mr. Palmer?”

“I’m a private investigator, Ms. Blue. I was hired by your grandfather to find you.”

“You work for Pangloss?” There was both suspicion and curiosity in her voice.

“Let’s say I owe him a favor. All I know is that I’m supposed to deliver a letter to you. Please, I’d like to arrange a meeting with you, if it’s at all possible.”

“You will be alone.” It wasn’t a question.

“Of course. You set the time and place. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

“Tuesday night at eleven. The Devil’s Playground, on the corner of Decatur and Governor Nicholls.”

The severed connection droned in his ear like an angry hornet. Palmer’s hands were shaking, his shirt glued to his back. It was the same woman. The one from his dream. He’d recognized the voice. He blinked and massaged his brow with the flat of his palm. Christ, what was going on? Was it the acid he used to do back in his club days? If so, it had picked one hell of a time to treat him to a flashback.

So many things had changed since he’d awakened from the coma. Sometimes it felt as if he’d spent the past thirty-eight years stumbling around in a sleepwalker’s daze and was only now fully awake. Other times it seemed he was on the verge of complete and utter mental collapse.

Before his “accident” he had never experienced much in the way of nightmares. Not since he was a kid, anyway. He’d had some doozies back then. His parents had disapproved of his discussing the dreams. His father insisted that talking about ‘things that ain’t real and never will be’ was pointless and only lead to confusion and, in some strange logic that only he seemed to grasp, insanity. Whenever Palmer tried to talk about his dreams, his father would threaten him with what happened to his uncle, the one he was named after.

“You keep fretting about stuff that ain’t real, you‘re gonna end up just like Uncle Willy! He was always worrying about the things he saw in his dreams. Where’d it get him, besides the State Hospital? You two are gonna end up sharing a padded room if you don’t lay off this shit!”

He could still remember the day the men in the white suits took Uncle Willy away, screaming at the top of his lungs about the worms crawling out of his skin. Palmer’s father had been quite upset. People on TV didn’t have members of their family carted away. At least not on Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best. It happened on the soaps his mom liked to watch all the time, though. He smiled wryly as he reached for the bourbon. Uncle Willy better shove over, then, because he was going to have company.

Palmer let the crowd push him along Bourbon Street. It was slow going and intensely claustrophobic, but in spite of the overcrowding, the noise, and the reek of piss and spilled beer, he was enjoying himself.

It was Mardi Gras, and he’d spent the day wandering the narrow streets of the French Quarter, marveling at the costumes and sampling the various local alcoholic beverages. Carnival revelers on the balconies overhead tossed beads and other trinkets at the crowd below. Occasionally a drunken tourist would bare a tit or a backside, causing a shower of hurled plastic beads and a firestorm of camera flashes. The whole thing was silly, trivial, bawdy and dumb.

Palmer thought it was great.

He broke free of the press of bodies at the next intersection and headed toward Jackson Square to watch the costumers promenade past the Saint Louis Basilica. He was amused by a band of masqueraders dressed as frogs heckling the extremist fundamentalists, who were protesting the merrymaking by handing out their own bogus religious tracts.

“Are you Saved, sir?”

Palmer looked down at the florid-faced woman in the Christ Is the Answer Crusade T-shirt. Her eyes were so magnified by her coke-bottle glasses they seemed to hover in front of her face.

“If not you shall burn in hell on Judgment Day!” she continued. “Jesus loves you, even if you are a sinner! If you confess your sin now, and kneel with me and pray for deliverance of your soul, it may not be too late for you. . “

Palmer shook his head, too overwhelmed by the woman’s zealotry to say anything. It wasn’t until he’d disentangled himself that he realized she’d slipped a tract into his pocket. The title dripped red ink like slime and read: Are You Ready for the End Times?

Judging from the crude illustration beneath the question, no one was: terrified “sinners” in tattered rags ran from flying insects the size of dachshunds, while haggard derelicts tried to slake their thirst at drinking fountain gushing blood, and a busty MTV-style Whore of Babylon lolled atop a seven-headed Beast. Meanwhile, in the background, a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus beamed beatifically at the hundreds of souls zipping skyward from a tangle of wrecked and abandoned cars on the interchange. Palmer tossed the tract to the ground and hurried away in search of beer.

He passed the next few hours drinking concoctions with so much grenadine in them the back of his throat puckered. Darkness came, and, as if upon clandestine agreement, the families with children vanished from the area, leaving only the hardcore to bid farewell to the flesh as, which seemed compelled to cram as much as possible into the few hours remaining to them before returning to their normal lives.

As darkness arrived, a shrill, almost hysterical, sense of abandon began to tinge the masqueraders’ celebrations, as drunken horseplay quickly turned into brawls. Palmer couldn’t tell the difference between screams and laughter in the crowd, and the eyes of the revelers gleamed from behind their borrowed faces. The need Palmer glimpsed in their bleary, unfocused stares was both repellent and fascinating. It was as if he were surrounded by thousands of empty people desperately trying to fill themselves. Suddenly he found himself overwhelmed by an image of being attacked by the screaming, laughing, empty people, who devoured his soul as easily as a lion cleans the marrow from a broken bone.

Gasping, he pushed past a group of masqueraders dressed as cockroaches and stumbled inside one of the all-hours tourist traps that lined the street, selling novelty items and T-shirts. He leaned against a postcard rack and shivered like a drunk with the DTs. There was still an hour to go before he could consider his job done. He decided to lay off the booze so he would be in the right mind to talk with the elusive Ms. Blue. Or if he meant to steer clear of the nuthouse, for that matter.

“You awright, mister?”

Palmer jerked his head up and stared at the man behind the cash register. The shopkeeper was the overall shape and size of a small foothill, dressed in khaki pants and I Survived Katrina T-shirt. He chewed on an unlit cigar, eyeing Palmer warily.

“You ain’t gonna be sick, are ya? If yer gonna puke, do it outside, fer th’ love ‘a Gawd! I awready cleaned up after three people t’night! Jesus!”

“I’m okay, thanks. It was a just a little... crowded out there.”

“Yeah, ain’t that the truth! I’ll be glad when ever’body goes home so’s I can get some sleep. Hey, is that a friend of yours?” He pointed at the busy street on the other side of the glass.

Palmer turned around, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly erect, but all he saw was a well-fed tourist couple.

“You mean them?”

“No, it was some guy in a suit. You know, dressed like them queers down at the art galleries. He was smokin’ a cigarette and wavin’ at ya, like he was tryin’ t’getcher attention.”

“It must have been a case of mistaken identity. I don’t know anybody in this town.”

The shopkeeper grunted and returned to thumbing through his racing forum. “Whatever ya say, Cap.”

Palmer stared out into the street. He hadn’t lied. He didn’t know anybody in New Orleans. So why did he feel as if someone had just walked over his grave?

The Devil’s Playground was a block off the historic French Market, and the odor of discarded produce was strong on the night wind, mixing with the ever-present reek of beer and urine that seemed to hang over the Quarter during Carnival. Painted flames covered the bar’s windows and a fiberglass statue of a grinning Mephistopheles, resplendent in his skintight red jumpsuit and neat goatee, stood next to the door. The Prince of Lies held aloft a pitchfork in his right hand, his left fist firmly planted on one hip, his jaunty demeanor far more reminiscent of Robin Hood than Goethe’s demon.

Palmer pushed his way inside, ignoring the looks from a pair of men sheathed in black leather and chrome chains lounging near the door. The place was packed, the buzz of a hundred voices lost under the crash and thunder of amplified dance music. He scanned the cramped quarters for a sign of his quarry. He made a try for the bar, brushing against a tall, heavyset woman.

The woman turned, smiling good-naturedly if somewhat drunkenly. Her face was heavily made up, chunky costume jewelry dripping from her fingers and ears.

“Hey there, handsome.” Her voice was husky, her breath redolent of whiskey. She reached up with one beringed hand and patted her hair. “You look lonesome. No one should be by themselves on Mardi Gras. My name’s Velveeta.”

“Uh, okay. My name’s Palmer. And I’m here to meet someone, actually.”

Velveeta’s smile grew wider. “Aren’t we all, sugar?” She leaned closer and Palmer glimpsed a hint of five o’clock shadow under the makeup. “Maybe I can keep you company until he shows up.”

Palmer shrugged. “Fine by me. But I’m waiting for a ‘she’, not a ‘he’.”

“Oh, I see.” Interest drained from Velveeta’s voice as she returned her gaze to the mirror behind the bar, readjusting her wig.

“Maybe you know her? Her name’s Sonja Blue.”

The drag queen jerked her head in his direction so hard she unseated her wig. Palmer glimpsed thinning hair the color of wheat straw. “The Blue Woman? You’re meeting the Blue Woman? Here?!” she gasped, staring at him as if he’d just announced he had an armed nuclear device strapped to his back.

Palmer was suddenly aware that everyone else in the bar was staring at him as well. The music continued to thump and growl like a caged animal, but no one spoke. His armpits began to dampen.

“Get out of here! We’ve got enough trouble as it is without you bringing her here!” The bartender shouted, gesturing angrily at the door.

“But—!”

Suddenly a dozen pairs of hands grabbed him, lifting him off the floor. Palmer recalled how he used to stage dive at the hard-core concerts, leaping out into the crowd for a brief moment of stolen glamour before jumping back into the seething confusion of the mosh pit. He didn’t try to fight them and, instead, allowed himself to be roughly passed over the heads of the bar’s patrons and dumped, unceremoniously, back onto the street. He straightened his rumpled clothes as best he could, glancing back at the doorway. The two men dressed in leather and chrome moved forward and blocked the entrance.

“Fuck this shit.” Palmer was in no position to take on two guys ten years his junior. Not if he wanted to keep what was left of his teeth in his head. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off around the corner before pausing to light a cigarette with trembling hands.

Palmer.

The voice was so close, it sounded like it was in his head. He spun around so fast he burned himself with his lighter, and found himself face-to-face with the woman he had been searching for. She was dressed in a pair of faded, much-worn blue jeans, a Cramps T-shirt, a ragged leather jacket a size too big for her, scuffed engineer boots and mirrored sunglasses.

“Are you Sonja? Sonja Blue?”

“You are Pangloss’s agent?”

He shrugged. “You could say that.”

“Were you followed?”

“No.

Her lips twisted into something like a smile. “You seem pretty sure of that.”

“I’m good at what I do.”

“You spoke of a letter from my... grandfather?”

Palmer reached into his jacket and withdrew the envelope. “Funny, the Doc doesn’t look old enough to have a granddaughter your age,” he quipped.

“He’s very well preserved. It’s a family trait. I’ll take that now, if you don’t mind.” She extended a pale, narrow hand toward him.

As he handed her the sealed letter, his fingers accidentally brushed against hers, and he heard what sounded like an old-fashioned flashcube going off in the back of his skull. He saw Sonja jerk her head as if she’d received an unexpected electrical shock. The street around them disappeared and Palmer found himself transported to what looked like a pool hall. Scattered around him were splintered pool cures, cracked billiard balls...and broken young men. The smell of blood and fear was everywhere, its primal intensity acting like an aphrodisiac. Standing before him was a frightened youth with Parrish-blue hair and the face of an errant choirboy. Palmer’s lips peeled back in a humorless smile as he plunged his teeth into the baby-faced miscreant’s throat. An orgasm shuddered through his nervous system as a hot gush of thick, salty blood filled his mouth.

The razor-sharp image disappeared as Sonja jerked her hand away from his, growling like a mountain lion. She then turned and ran, disappearing into the darkness before Palmer had a chance to orient himself. He felt dizzy, as if he’d just stepped off aTilt-A-Whirl. He could still taste the boy’s blood. The very memory of it made bile burn the back of his throat. He didn’t want to think about it; not now, not ever. He especially didn’t want to think about how he’d recognized the blue-haired boy as being Jimmy Eichorn.

All he wanted to do was get back to the house, phone Pangloss and tell him he’d fulfilled his part of the bargain. He’d collect his bonus and go somewhere nice and sunny, like Mexico, and sell tchotkes to the turistas. He’d had enough of the private detective business to last him a lifetime.

It was almost midnight, and Bourbon Street was jammed with partygoers determined to wring the few remaining minutes of pleasure out of Carnival. The noise and excitement was almost enough to make him forget what had just happened.

At first he thought the fluttering of his sleeve was nothing but the wind. Then it spoke his name.

He turned and stared into the pale, haggard face of a man in his late thirties, dressed in an expensive, but poorly-fitted suit. The stranger lifted a smoldering Gaulois to his thin lips, his eyes seeming to glow in the fluorescent and neon glare from a nearby live sex show sign.

With a start, he recognized the smirking, arrogant features. He took an involuntary step backward, his scalp tightening as his heart began to race. The street noise faded into an indistinct rumble, as if he were underwater. He prayed he wasn’t having a stroke, though that would at least explain what was happening to him.

“You’re dead,” Palmer said in an accusing voice.

Geoffrey Chastain, known to friends and enemies as Chaz, simply shrugged his shoulders. “Tell me something I don’t know.” The dead man drew another lung full of smoke from his phantom cigarette, causing his midsection to swirl. “I’ve been tryin’ to get your attention all bloody night! Coo! You’re a dense bugger! Look, there’s not much time left: Mardi Gras is one of the few times us friggin’ spirits of the dead can corporealize and mingle with the living. We dead men aren’t supposed to be tellin’ tales, but take some advice from one who knows: Sod getting your pay from Pangloss. Just get on the next bleedin’ bus outta town and forget you ever saw her!”

“You mean Sonja—?”

“Who the bloody fuck else? She’s the Bloofer Lady herself! She’s death on two legs, not that she can help it, mind you. It’s just her way. But that won’t help you none when the time comes. Look, mate; I was a real pisser when I was alive like you. It’s not pretty, lookin’ back an’ seeing me for the bastard I was. But I prefer things are to when I was flesh ‘n’ blood. So maybe how she did me wasn’t so bad.”

Palmer’s stomach knotted tighter. “Are you saying she—?”

“Snuffed me? Ain’t you the bright student! She killed me, alright; just like she did the Blue Monkeys. She was feeling her oats that night. Not that I could blame her for it—but I haven’t been knackered long enough t’ forgive her for the murdering.

“Why are you warning me?” Palmer’s fear had abated in the face of this mundane, chain-smoking specter. He was starting to feel more aggravated than frightened.

Chaz’s smirk widened. “You and me, we’re kindred spirits. That bullet did more than punch a hole in you, mate. It woke up something inside you. Jump-started it, as it were. So far you’ve only had a taste of having the world turn itself inside out like a magician’s sack, and you being the only one who seems to notice, but you better get used to it, mate, before it drives you mad, like it did me mum—and yer Uncle Willy. You’re what they call a ‘sensitive,’ now. They like using sensitives like you and me; we make handy servants. How do you think Pangloss found you, eh? You’ve been broadcasting like a bloody shortwave radio since you’ve been shot!

“Wait a second! What do you mean by that?”

The cathedral bell began to toll, marking the transition from excess to penance. “Sorry, mate. Seems me time’s run out,” Chaz grinned as he stepped into the street.

“What do you mean? Who are they?”

Second toll. Third toll.

The ghost laughed and shook his insubstantial head. “You’re not going to leave it be, are you? I can see it in th’ folds of your brain!”

Fourth toll of the bell. Fifth.

“Why are you telling me these things?” Palmer demanded. “Why?”

“Because you put flowers on me grave, that’s why!” Chaz replied. “We dead are a sentimental lot.”

Sixth. Seventh.

Halfway up the block mounted policemen appeared in the street, riding six abreast, bullhorns held in their hands. Behind them Palmer glimpsed the huge street-sweeping machines, brushes wildly spinning in anticipation of flushing the gutters clean of accumulated filth, human and otherwise. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”

Eighth. Ninth.

Chaz now shimmered with every toll of the bell, like a reflection in a bestirred pool. Palmer tried to push past the throng of revelers, desperate to win one last answer from the specter.

The police on horseback moved inexorably forward, forcing the people milling in the street either back onto the sidewalks or into the bars. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”The sanitation trucks blasted their horns as if to punctuate the commandment.

Tenth. Eleventh.

Suddenly a huge, heavy hand closed on Palmer’s shoulder, pinning him to the spot. He looked up to see the brutish features of the man he’d seen skulking in Pangloss’s shrubbery, the one called Kief, the one who looked like a shaved gorilla.

“Renfield say come now.”

Twelfth stroke: Midnight.

Chaz wavered like a laser hologram projected onto smoke. Palmer watched as one of New Orleans’ finest rode through the dead man. He expected the horse, at least, to react to the ghost, but all it did was flare its nostrils, toss its mane and leave a pile of dung in its wake.

“Renfield say you come now!” arrived, ushering in Lent.

The shaved gorilla tightened his grip, causing Palmer to cry out in pain. This made Kief smile, something Palmer definitely wished he hadn’t seen.

Chapter Four

Sonja Blue watched as the police and sanitation workers brought Carnival to an end. She knew that the hard-core partying would continue well until dawn, but from now on it would have to be indoors, not on the streets. The harlequin’s mask had been exchanged for the sackcloth of the penitent. She lifted her gaze from the streets, watching the spirits of the dead spiral upward like bats leaving a cave. Neither variety of tourist would be staying to take communion.

She frowned and pulled the envelope from her pocket, turning it over and over as if by handling it she could divine its contents. Pangloss. She was surprised to realize it had been a decade since they last met face-to-face. Like most Pretenders, her sense of time had become distorted, and was increasingly difficult for her to distinguish months from years.

She ran her fingers over the wax seal, her mood darkening as she recalled the good doctor’s treachery below the streets of Rome. The seal cracked easily, falling in three separate pieces at her feet. The letter was on expensive stationery that felt like silk and smelled of cologne. The penmanship was exquisitely baroque. No doubt Pangloss still favored an old-fashioned quill pen.

My Dear Sonja,

Please forgive the convoluted method by which this letter had been delivered. I have attempted to contact you on numerous occasions, through various menials, but you are a difficult woman to communicate with in such a manner. However, I do not hold the rash disposal of my minions against you. In many ways, I find your gift for carnage reassuring. It has been far too long since we last spoke, and I fear that our prior meeting has resulted in an unfavorable view of me. In the years since we last met, I have followed your antics with great interest, and found your handling of the Catherine Wheele situation gauche but effective. You have a natural talent for atrocity, my dear. It needs refining, but I believe you have it in you to produce a tableau on the level of Baron Luxor’s Jonestown or Lord Kinksi’s classic Texas Tower massacre. But I am not writing simply to compliment your style. No, there is much I must tell you concerning Morgan. You can contact me through the human, Palmer.

Sonja looked at her left hand, the one the private investigator had touched. She had not recognized him as sensitive when they first met—possibly because he was unaware of his own talent—so she had been unshielded at the moment of contact. The result had been a barrage of sensory images, the most vivid that of a scarlet-clad woman armed with a smoking gun, before breaking contact. The exchange had been unexpected and unwelcome, but she had gleaned enough information from the jumble to discern that Palmer was exactly what he thought he was: a free agent.

Perhaps, after all these years, it was time to finally get back in touch with the “family”, after all.

Renfield’s pallid bureaucrat’s features broke into something like a smile at the sight of Palmer being dragged into the room by the ogre. “Ah! Seeing that Kief has reeled you in, I assume you must have fulfilled your part of the bargain. You did succeed in delivering the letter, did you not, Mr. Palmer?”

“Yeah, I delivered your fucking letter!” Palmer tried to jerk free of Kief’s grip, only to hear the seams in his jacket tear. “What the hell are you trying to pull, Renfield?”

“Mr. Palmer, if you continue to struggle, I will tell Kief to pull your right arm off and beat you with it,” Renfield warned, smiling that empty smile of his.

Palmer immediately fell still. He glanced around the room, which was empty save for Renfield and the chair he was sitting in, and wondered if the louvered shutters were nailed shut. If not, he might stand a chance of escape, providing Kief loosened his grip and he didn’t break every bone in his body jumping from the third-floor balcony onto the overgrown garden patio below.

“I wouldn’t recommend trying such heroics, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield smiled, crossing and re-crossing his legs like a bored personnel manager at a job interview. “The shutters are, indeed, nailed shut. No need to look so surprised! Of course I can read your mind—what little there is of it. You’re an open book to me. Or should I say short story? You may let go of him now, Kief. I can handle Mr. Palmer from here. Go and watch the door.”

The vise clamping his shoulder disappeared as Kief lumbered out of the room, pausing at the door to give Palmer a final, hungry look.

“Go on! Go on! Do as I say!” snapped Renfield, waving at the goon as if shooing a bothersome child out of the kitchen. “You’ll get your share, as always!”

Once Kief was safely on the other side of the door, Palmer swung around to face Renfield, his hands balled into fists. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? If I don’t get some answers I’m gonna—”

“You’re going to die, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield said coolly.

Suddenly fire coursed through Palmer’s veins, turning his blood to slag. His intestines boiled in their own juices as his bones powdered into ash. His eyeballs exploded and dribbled down his cheeks like egg yolks. He tried to scream, but his lungs were full of burning water.

Then the fire disappeared as quickly as it descended, leaving Palmer on the bare floor, knees drawn up under his chin. He could taste blood in his mouth from having bitten his tongue.

“Wha-What did you do to me?” he rasped.

“I killed you, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield replied matter-of-factly. “And I will continue to kill you until I grow bored or you lose your mind, whichever comes first. Frankly, I can’t understand what it is Pangloss finds so fascinating about you. True, you have some wild talent,” he sniffed. “But all the other mental and emotional baggage you carry— empathy, sympathy, the capacity for love—is simply not worth the effort of deprogramming!”

Without warning, extreme cold shot through Palmer, spearing his nervous system with a million icicles. His lungs filled with ice crystals and his urine turned to slush in his bladder. He whimpered as his toes and fingers turned black and fell away like wilted petals.

Suddenly Renfield was back, except now his head was wreathed in a strange glow the color of a fresh bruise. He had abandoned his chair and was kneeling beside Palmer, staring into his face. “Of course, I have no intention of allowing you to survive this little ordeal,” he said with a nasty smile, his normally wan features now flushed with color. “I’ve worked too long to allow some upstart to replace me. You think I didn’t notice how he looked at you?” His voice quavered, drunk on emotions long held in check, his eyes bright and feral as a starved coyote’s. “He promised me power and life eternal! Me, not you! He told he loved me, that he needed me! But that was just a lie. But I’ll make sure he never has you. I’ll tell him you couldn’t handle the deprogramming. It won’t be a lie, really. And once I give you to Kief for disposal, no one will know the difference! Not even the Doctor!”

Just then the louvered shutters shattered inward in a spray of splintered wood as a leather-clad figure landed on the bare floor, snarling like an enraged panther. Palmer felt the numbness in his limbs vanish as Renfield turned his attention to the intruder. The reverse-negative halo surrounding his head pulsed, snapping forth a whip-like tendril.

The leather-clad figure rose, revealing itself to be none other than the elusive Sonja Blue. She motioned with her left hand, as if batting away a worrisome insect.

“You call that a psychic attack?” she laughed. “No wonder Pangloss is looking to upgrade!”

Palmer got to his feet, surprised to find the recent agonies he’d undergone had left him physically unscathed. Sonja grabbed Renfield by his lapels, pulling him so close they were literally nose-to nose. As Palmer looked at her, he saw a spiky crown of reddish-black light radiating from her head, flickering like a defective neon sign.

“Kief!” Renfield shrieked.

“Where’s Morgan?” she growled.

“Do you honestly believe I’d tell you?” Renfield sneered.

“You’ve got a point,” she agreed, letting go of his jacket.

Renfield smiled smugly as he straightened his lapels, only to have her grab him by the jaw and force his head sharply upward, just as the door to the room banged inward, snapping its hinges.

Kief squeezed through the doorway, his piggy little eyes moving from Palmer to Sonja before settling on Renfield’s corpse. Sonja stepped forward, motioning for Palmer to get behind her. He saw that she held an open switchblade in one hand.

“Jesus Christ, woman, there’s no way you can go up against that goon with just a knife!”

She waved him silent, never taking her eyes off the hulking figure filling the doorway. “Keep quiet! I know what I’m doing!”

Kief made a rumbling noise deep in his throat and stepped forward, sniffing the air like a hunting dog. He glanced at them suspiciously, his nostrils flaring, but did not offer to attack. Instead, his attention seemed fixed on Renfield’s dead body. Saliva dripping from his lower lip in thick ropes, Kief abruptly emitted a loud squealing sound, like that of a hog at a trough, and pounced on the corpse.

Sonja motioned for him to head for the door, following after him, her eyes fixed on the drooling goon as he Palmer heard fabric rip as the giant tore at the dead man’s clothes like an eager opening a Christmas present.

“What’s he doing’?” Palmer whispered.

“You don’t want to know.”

Chapter Five

Palmer sat on a bar stool, a glass of bourbon in his hand, and tried to piece together the insanity he now he found himself mired in. He had always prided himself on his ability to adapt to adverse conditions. After all, he learned how to cope when his family kicked him out of the house at the tender age of seventeen, didn’t he? He’d survived three hellish months on an Alabama work gang, back when being a hitchhiker with weird-looking hair was a criminal offense. He’d watched friends unwilling to admit they were no longer as young as they used to be succumb to drugs and disease. There was no percentage in denying the inevitability of change. Evolve or die: he should have it tattooed on his forehead.

He took another swallow, glancing over the rim of his drink at his savior. She sat on the stool next to him, scanning their surroundings to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Palmer was uncertain as to whether he trusted the mirror-eyed woman, but did not see he had any choice.

“Is Pangloss really your grandfather?” he asked.

She shrugged. “In a way. But if you’re asking if he is my biological grandfather? No, he is not.”

“That what I thought,” Palmer grunted. “He’s nowhere near old enough to have a grandchild your age.”

“Pangloss is at least fifteen hundred years old, Mr. Palmer.”

“So I’m lousy at guessing ages.”

“You seem rather calm, considering what you’ve just experienced.”

“After talking to the dead, discovering I possess psychic powers and being brain-raped by a crazed telepath, being told my employer is a vampire is rather anticlimactic.”

“You spoke with the dead?” she frowned.

“Actually, it was more the other way around. Your old boyfriend is a real chatterbox.”

“You saw Chaz?”

Palmer nodded, watching her for signs of a reaction. If the news affected her in any way, it did not show in her demeanor.

“And what, exactly, did he have to say?”

“That I should avoid you like the plague and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“It seems death has given him some smarts,” she said with a humorless laugh.

“He also said you killed him.”

“The dead don’t lie,” she replied. “I have been a murderer for a very long time, Mr. Palmer. Killing is a habit of mine. Chaz was my partner for some years. He was like you—a sensitive. He was a small-time hustler when I met him, rooking drug dealers and petty criminals. We clicked. It was good-for a while. Then there was trouble. Chaz ended up selling me out, even going so far as betraying me with a kiss—he always did have a flair for the theatrical. I ended up spending six months locked away in a madhouse because of him. I do not expect loyalty from humans, but treachery is another matter altogether. His death was not just, but it was fair.”

“There was also a boy...” Palmer’s throat tightened at the memory of Jimmy Eichorn’s blood. “A boy with blue hair.”

“Yes, I remember. He was one of the Blue Monkeys. I take it he is still alive?”

“If you want to call it that.”

She shrugged. “He possessed information, and I was, well, let’s just say I was in need at the time, and leave it at that.”

“But he was only fifteen—” Palmer protested.

“And already guilty of gang rape and second-degree murder,” Sonja countered. “Do not waste your sympathy on him, Mr. Palmer. Like I said, what I do is not just, but it is fair.”

It was a couple hours before dawn when Sonja showed him to his room. She lived in a large attic apartment on the far end of Decatur Street, overlooking the French Market. The room’s furnishings consisted of a narrow bed and nothing else.

“Sorry I can’t offer you posher accommodations, but I normally don’t entertain guests,” she explained. “But you’ll be safe here. I’ll be keeping guard to make sure Pangloss’s pet ogre hasn’t caught your scent and tracked you down again.”

“Ogre?” Palmer said with a disbelieving laugh. “Is that what you call that thing?”

“It certainly wasn’t a tooth fairy,” she replied drily. “Ogres are big and dumb and have some seriously nasty dietary habits. They could get away with eating children and looting villages back in the Dark Ages, but nowadays it tends to attract attention. That’s why most of them sign on as muscle for big shots like Pangloss. They serve as walking garbage disposals, taking care of their masters’ ‘empties’. This is how Renfield planned to make you ‘disappear’, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”

“But why would Pangloss want to kill me?”

“He doesn’t want you dead, Palmer,” Sonja replied. “That was Renfield’s goal, not Pangloss’. No, the Good Doctor wants you twisted.” Sonja replied. “For you to be of any use to him, he has to completely destroy your ego so that your needs and desires are focused on him. You must be willing to live-and die-for your master. Any vestige of human emotion, except those required by your master, is systematically erased. Obviously, Renfield was under orders to twist you, so you could be added to Pangloss’ stable of servants, so to speak. But he became jealous of you and rebelled. You’re lucky he wanted to kill you, or you’d be Pangloss’ mind-slave right now.”

“Yeah. ‘Lucky’ was just the word I was looking for,” Palmer said sourly.

Sonja peered out the window of her attic apartment, searching the early morning shadows for signs of the ogre. She doubted it had the brains to come looking for them without being told to do so, but she’d learned the hard way never to underestimate the Good Doctor. She plucked Pangloss’s letter from inside her jacket, flattening the paper against the windowsill.

There is much I must tell you concerning Morgan.

Her hands balled themselves into tight fists as she read his name. She exhaled a nervous, shaky breath. She had spent the better part of her unlife searching for the vampire who had raped a teenaged girl, tainted her blood, and turned her into something that called itself Sonja Blue.

Now Pangloss, the vampire responsible for Morgan’s creation, was tempting her with information concerning his whereabouts. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried such a tactic. The last time had been under the streets of Rome, in a catacomb held sacred to the shadow races that manipulated mankind. She had been too proud to agree to Pangloss’s ‘business proposition’, back then, and it was lucky to have escaped his wrath. What was the old bastard planning this time? It was not in his nature to volunteer information freely. He wanted—or, more likely, needed—something from her in exchange.

You can contact me through the human, Palmer.

It was obvious Pangloss intended to use the private investigator to lure her closer, since he knew she would never allow a twisted sensitive or a Pretender within striking distance. But it was equally clear that once Palmer had finished his purpose, Pangloss would see to it his mind was suitably broken in order to use him as a replace for the not-so-dearly departed Renfield. So what was she to do with Palmer? Part of her, that which she thought of as the Other, knew what it wanted to do with him, but she refused to listen to its counsel.

Palmer moaned in his sleep, shifting uneasily on the narrow bed. Renfield’s pasty face, as wide and pale as the moon, filled his dreams. The dead man’s eyes were as flat and black as buttons, his lips thin and blue. Palmer could hear Renfield’s voice, even though the satellite-sized face’s mouth remained caught in a rictus grin.

She’s going to make you like me. A lap dog. Lap dog. Lap, dog, lap!

Palmer sat up, the sweat running into his eyes. His mouth was dry, his head aching as if the lobes of his brain were dividing like amoebas. He stared at the circular window set in the wall above the bed. He got up and swiveled the window open on its pivot, inhaling a deep breath of Mississippi River-saturated air. Somewhere in the distance, a barge sounded a long, mournful note.

“Will-yummmm.”

No. It couldn’t be. He leaned his forehead against the peeling paint on the wall, trying to find some reassurance that he was, indeed, awake. He knew it.

“Why won’t you look at me, baby?” Lola purred. “Aren’t you glad to see me, honey?”

Palmer bit his lip as the familiar burning tore at his chest. His scar throbbed and pulsed as if he’d been branded with a red-hot coat hanger. He wouldn’t look at her. She wasn’t real. She was a dream. He was awake. He had to be. He opened his eyes, staring out the window for proof that he was, indeed, in the waking world.

To his horror, he saw that New Orleans was on fire; the city wrapped in sheets of flame, yet no one seemed to notice. Burning children ran up and down the streets, smoke and laughter billowing from their lobster-red mouths. Women dressed in crackling aprons swept their stoops clean of ash. Business executives dressed in smoldering Brooks Brothers suits paused to check the melted slag strapped to their wrists before hurrying on their way, smoking attaché cases clenched in their roasted hands. On the balcony opposite Palmer’s window two lovers embraced, oblivious to the blisters rising on their naked flesh, while their wrought iron bower softened and dripped like licorice left in the sun.

The pain grew stronger in his chest, forcing an involuntary cry from his lips. There was no use in denying her. She was going to have her way, no matter how hard he tried to stop her. Groaning, Palmer turned to face Lola’s horrible love.

The smell of the marui roused Sonja from her thoughts. Then she heard Palmer’s stifled cry. She kicked the door to the bedroom open, growling at the sight of the ill-formed creature crouched atop the sleeping man, its claws buried in his chest.

The marui screeched in alarm and spread its membranous wings as it attempted to take flight. Sonja’s fingers closed on its slippery flanks and the creature’s high-pitched squealing became ultrasonic.

Suddenly Palmer was awake, staring in confusion at the combatants wrestling beside his bed.

“Don’t just sit there gawking!” Sonja shouted. “Help with this thing!”

“How?”

“Grab its neck!”

Palmer took one look at the creature’s mouthful of barbed teeth and shook his head. “Like hell I will!”

“Just do it, damn it!”

Palmer grimaced as his hands closed on the thing’s whip-like neck. Its flesh was slick and sticky, as if the wildly struggling beast was composed of animated phlegm. Once its biting end was under control, Sonja was able to pin the rest of the creature to the floor.

“What in the name of hell is this thing?” he gasped in horror.

The beast, weakened by the scuffle, was no longer trying to escape and lay crumpled on the floor like a damaged kite. Palmer stared at its twisted, almost human musculature and tattered, bat-like wings. The nightmare creature’s neck looked like a loop of umbilical cord, its bald, old man’s head dominated by large, fox-like ears and bristling barbed teeth. Just looking at the thing made his scar tighten.

“They’re called marui, “she explained, resting her foot on the brute’s neck. “They also go by night-elves, or le rudge-pula, depending on the part of the world you happen to be in. They batten onto sleepers, manipulating dreams in order to feed on the fear born of nightmares. Judging by its size, this one’s been feasting on you for some time. They only take on corporeal form while they feed.”

“You mean this thing’s a nightmare?”

“Bad dreams exist for their own reasons; marui simply benefit from the negative energy that is released. But they’re not what you’d call smart.” She applied pressure on the creature’s neck, smiling as it wailed in distress. “My guess is that Pangloss sicced this little darling on you, hoping to make Renfield’s job easier when the time came. Isn’t that so, Rover?” She applied more pressure to the marui’s throat. The creature squealed in Lola’s voice:

“Will-yummm, help meee.”

Palmer brought his heel down on the thing’s skull, grinding it into a sticky paste. The marui shuddered once and began to dissolve, the ectoplasm evaporating like dry ice.

“I trust you slept well.”

Palmer put down his mug of chicory coffee and turned to look at Sonja. She was standing in the kitchen door, dressed in a green silk kimono embroidered with tiny butterflies the color of smoke. Her hair was hidden by a clean white towel wrapped about her head turban-style. She was still wearing mirrored sunglasses. It had never occurred to Palmer that vampires took showers.

“Never slept better,” he said. And it was the truth. For the first time in weeks, his sleep had been free of nightmares, allowing him to awake that afternoon genuinely refreshed and rejuvenated.

“I trust you kept yourself entertained while I was... indisposed throughout the day.” Sonja opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle full of dark red liquid. She cracked the seal and brought the bottle to her lips, only to halt upon seeing the look on Palmer’s face. “Forgive me—where are my manners?” She said as she put the blood aside.

“There’s nothing for you to apologize for,” he said. “After all, it’s your place. I’m just a guest here; I have no right to judge.”

Sonja tilted her head to one side, regarding him with her one-way gaze. “You’re quite adaptable for a human.”

“Look, it’s pretty obvious that I’m at a huge disadvantage right now. Everything I ever thought was real has been turned upside down. I need help trying to figure where I fit into all this craziness. I’d like to make a business proposition: I need help with this ham radio set in my skull, right? You need help with Pangloss, right? How about we team up-just for a little while? You could teach me how to use what I got, and I could do whatever it is you need me to do.”

“Mr. Palmer, do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?”

“Not really. But I know that if I don’t get help, and get it soon, I’m going to go nuts. I can’t handle walking around seeing things I know are real, but no one else can.” He could feel his hands start to tremble as he spoke, but he refused to look at them. “Look, I can’t lie to you. You scare me, lady. But it’s like my Uncle Willy used to say: better the devil you know.”

Compared to the day before, the French Quarter was practically deserted. Bourbon Street was open for business, as usual, but the barkers, for once, seemed uninterested in luring the handful of tourists wandering the garbage-strewn streets into their dens of iniquity. The overall mood was a mixture of exhaustion and relief, as if the city was recovering from a bout of fever.

Palmer trailed after Sonja, trying to ignore the stares that followed them down the narrow streets. Sonja moved swiftly and purposefully through the clustered shadows, her hands jammed into the pockets of her leather jacket. She seemed preoccupied, but Palmer had no doubt that she was very much aware of the looks aimed at her. The fear and loathing that radiated from the hustlers, pushers and other Quarter habitués was strong enough to make Palmer feel like someone had liberated an ant farm in his underwear. He ran through the mental exercises for blocking ambient emotions Sonja had taught him before leaving the apartment that evening, and his skin stopped crawling.

“It appears you’re not very well-liked around here,” he observed.

She shot him a glance over her shoulder. “Get used to it. Most humans have an instinctual dislike of Pretenders and sensitives.”

Palmer recalled his own immediate, gut-level reaction to Renfield and winced. “You’ve used that word before: Pretenders. What does it mean?”

“Ever read Lovecraft?”

“Back in high school,” he replied with a shrug.

“Remember that stuff about how mankind is only a recent development, as far as the earth is concerned, and how giant ugly nameless horrors are just sitting around on their tentacles, waiting for when the time is ripe to take over the world?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s kind of like that, except this shit is real.”

“I don’t think I want to know any more.”

“Too late,” she said with a humorless laugh. “Do you believe in hell?”

Palmer blinked, taken aback. “If you mean the Christian hell, where people are tortured by guys with pitchforks and pointy ears, no, I don’t believe in that.”

“Me neither. But I do believe in demons. And that’s where we’re going—to make a deal with a devil.”

“You mean Satan?”

“Are you kidding? He’s way too expensive. No, the guy I go to is reasonably priced.”

Palmer decided at that point that it might be better if he stopped asking questions.

The Monastery was a small, dark bar that had, in a fit of perversity, decided on an ecclesiastical decor. The booths lining the wall had once been pews, and fragments of stained glass, salvaged from various desanctified churches, had been soldered together to create a disjointed jigsaw collage in the skylight. Plaster saints and icons in varying states of decay were scattered about, including a blackened Madonna and Child, smudged by exposure to too many votive candles, who stared down at the Monastery’s denizen’s with flat, robin’s egg blue eyes from their perch over the liquor supply. A battered Rockola jukebox played 1970s era Rolling Stones through a pair of decrepit speakers.

With its cheap prices, slovenly service and haphazard attitude toward hygiene, the Monastery did not cater to the credit card-packing tourists the Quarter thrived on. As Palmer and Sonja entered the bar, the prostitute sipping her sloe gin fizz and the bartender drying a highball glass with a grimy rag stopped what they were doing to stare intently at them.

“What if the guy you’re looking for isn’t here?” Palmer whispered hopefully.

“He’s here, all right,” she replied confidently. “He’s always here.” She strode over to the back booth, where the shadows were the deepest. Her lips curled into a thin, cold smile. “Hello, Malfeis.”

The demon returned her smile, licking his lips with a forked tongue. “Ah, Sonja! Please, call me Mal! There is no need to stand on formalities.”

Palmer frowned. Whatever he’d been expecting to find, it definitely wasn’t a teenaged boy dressed in faded denims and a Shred or Die T-shirt. A skateboard, its belly painted to depict an eyeball wreathed in Day-Glo flames, leaned against the converted pew.

“This is who you came here to meet? Are you joking?” he asked in disbelief. “This kid isn’t even old enough to be in here!”

Malfeis lifted an upswept eyebrow in amusement. “Who’s the new Renfield, Sonja?”

“My name’s not Renfield.” Palmer snapped, fighting the urge to grab the snot-nosed little skate punk by his rat-tail. “What’d you mean by that?”

Sonja waved him silent. “I’ll explain after I tend to business. Wait for me at the bar, Palmer.”

“But—”

“I said wait at the bar.” Her voice was as hard and cold as steel, and as just as unyielding. She waited until Palmer left before taking her place in the booth.

“Quite a change from the last time, Mal,” she said, gesturing to his current manifestation. “Last time I saw you, you were a Rastaman.”

The demon shrugged, smiling slyly. “I like to keep it fresh. So, what brings you back into my clutches, sweet thing?”

“I think you already know that.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t play cute with me, Mal. I don’t have the time or the patience right now. I need to know what Pangloss has up his sleeve.” She pulled the letter from Pangloss from her jacket, sliding it across the table.

Malfeis tapped the folded paper with an overly long fingernail and grunted. “Easy enough. What’s in it for me?”

She produced a black ceramic vessel the size of an unguent jar from her pocket and held it out toward the demon. “Got it in from Katmandu just last week. The powdered skull of a man who killed six Tibetan holy men, then murdered and raped three missionaries. Its good shit, man, as pure as you’ll find it.”

Mal’s catlike eyes filled with a strange fire. His fingers drummed nervously against the tabletop. “Gimme a taste.”

Sonja carefully unscrewed the lid and dispensed a pinch of a fine, chalky yellow powder into the demon’s outstretched palm. The demon daubed a forefinger in the pulverized skull and popped it his mouth.

“So? What’s the verdict? Deal?”

Mal nodded, appreciatively. “Done.”

Sonja pushed the jar over to Malfeis’s side of the table. The demon brought out a gold-plated razor blade and a flat piece of volcanic glass, quickly arranging himself a generous rail of powdered skull. Oblivious to his surroundings, Malfeis lowered his head to the table and inhaled the line with both nostrils, snuffling like a bloodhound. He jerked his head up when he was finished, blowing out his cheeks and shaking himself like a winded stallion. His eyes were too big and the pupils slitted unnaturally, but otherwise he still looked human.

“Cold-blooded! That some true righteous shit!” He grinned, showing a mouthful of shark teeth.

“Glad it meets your approval. Now, about Pangloss...”

“No problem!” Malfeis picked up the letter and tapped one edge between his eyebrows. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, exposing green-tinged whites. A strange, basso profundo gargle rumbled from deep inside his narrow, hairless chest, but no one in the bar seemed to notice. After a second or two he reconnected, his eyes dropping back down like the symbols on a slot machine.

“There’s not much available information concerning Pangloss, outside of his recent attempts to make contact with you. That much seems up front. There does seem to be a bit of a buzz concerning Morgan, though.”

“Really? What about?”

“Sorry, that requires First Hierarchy clearance. I don’t have the necessary power to access that information for you, at least not in detail. I can tell that whatever it is Morgan is doing, it’s generating a great deal of speculation among the First and Second Hierarchies. But whether that means they approve of what he’s doing is impossible to say.”

“Don’t you have some connections? I thought your uncle was a Second Hierarch.”

“Uncle Oeillet? He’s not exactly what you’d call a big wheel nowadays. His star’s been on the decline since the Reformation. He’s in charge of tempting people to break their vows of poverty, for crying out loud! Still, a direct hookup with him rates a blood sacrifice of at least three quarts. I wish I could cut you a better deal on that, babe, but them’s the rules.”

Palmer glowered first at the highball in his hand then back at Sonja, still talking with the fresh-faced punk with the funny-looking eyes. The Black Madonna stared down at him from her place above the liquor. The Black Baby Jesus looked like a doll someone had dropped down a coal chute, its chubby uplifted arms ending in misshapen fists, thanks to fungus rotting off its fingers.

“Hey there, mister,” the prostitute at the end of the bar leered. “You looking to party?”

He shook his head without looking up from his drink. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Are you sure about that?”

There was something in her voice that made him look up, and what he saw was enough to make him gasp in horror. Seated at the end of the bar was Lola. He could feel insanity rushing toward him, yawning like a snake eager to swallow him whole, right down to his cigarillos and library card. She smiled seductively and moved closer to him. She smelled of sloe gin fizzes and something Palmer recognized but could not name. Her fingers were cold and dry against his exposed flesh, but Palmer was beyond shivering. At her touch, his penis became painfully erect, to the point of forcing tears from the corners of his eyes.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she cooed in his ear. “I’ve been waiting such a long time.”

His dick throbbed as if someone had slipped a piano wire tourniquet around its base and was slowly cutting off the circulation. Palmer wanted to cry out, but his mouth had been sealed from the inside.

“Come on, baby. I got a place we can go and be alone,” Lola said, hooking her arm in his as she pulled him free of the stool. Although she was six inches shorter than he was and barely weighed and hundred and pounds, she was amazingly strong. “When we’re alone, I’ll fuck your brains out!” The way she laughed made it sound like the joke was on him.

Palmer didn’t want to go, but it was as if he was being pulled along by a wire fastened to the end of his dick. Every time he tried to fight it, the invisible tourniquet tightened its excruciating hold on his member. They were halfway out the door before a he felt someone grab him by the elbow.

“Back off, hell-bitch!” Sonja snarled as she yanked Palmer back into the bar.

Lola held firm, hissing like a cat as she dug her nails into his upper arm. Palmer tried to scream, but his mouth was still pasted shut. He pictured himself being ripped apart like a wishbone as the two fought over him. Then Sonja produced her switchblade and neatly severed Lola’s hand at the wrist, weakening her grip on Palmer long enough for her rival to wrench him free of her grasp. Lola calmly picked up her severed hand and tried to stick it back on her wrist. To his surprise, the graft took.

Once physical contact was broken, his overinflated sex organ rapidly shrank like a deflating balloon. It was the first time in his life he’d been relieved to lose an erection. “Lola...?” he rasped, now that he could once again speak.

“She’s not Lola,” Sonja said. “Take my hand: see as I see.” Before Palmer could protest, she grabbed his right hand and squeezed.

Suddenly Lola was gone, replaced by a creature with three pairs of floppy tits, arms as long and hairy as an ape, crooked legs, with a six-inch-long sheathed clitoris dangling between her shanks and tiny horns growing from a sloping forehead.

The succubus hissed, her lipless mouth hinged like a piranha’s. She stepped forward, growling a challenge to the mirror-eyed intruder that had dared steal her evening’s repast.

“Jamara!” The voice was as loud as thunder and so deep it sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a well. The succubus cringed at the reprimand, automatically presenting her flank in submission.

Palmer turned and saw the boy called Malfeis rise from his booth in the back, casting aside his mortal guise as he did so. The demon stood over six feet tall, even though the curvature of his spine made him stoop, and was completely covered in coarse, brick red hair, like that of an orangutan, save for his twin-pronged penis. His features were porcine in appearance, complete with curving boar’s tusks and a twitching snout, and he walked on cloven feet.

Malfeis shouldered his way past Sonja and Palmer and reached behind the succubus and grabbed her tail, giving it a vicious twist. Jamara squealed like a sow dragged to slaughter and tried to break free, only to have Malfeis propel her out onto the street.

“I’m sorry about that,” the demon said, his manifestation once more assuming the appearance of a young man. “I promised one of my sisters I’d break her in, but I’m afraid it’s just not working out.”

Chapter Six

Palmer shifted in his seat and tried to ride out the nicotine fit. He could feel the pack of cigarettes calling out to him from inside his breast pocket, nestled against his heart like the picture of a loved one.

Sonja sat beside him, mirrored shades in place, nonchalantly paging through an in-flight magazine. His companion was an up-to-date vampire; no crates packed with native earth for her. She believed in traveling first class. “We should arrive in a couple of hours. Pangloss said he’d have his car there to meet us. I have no reason not to believe him,” she said without looking up from the article on Fun-Filled Florida Family Vacations.

Palmer nodded without saying anything. Personally, he considered the decision to meet with Pangloss suicidal. Part of him wondered if she’d used a devious form of mind control on him to make him agree to come along. He knew she could do stuff like that. In deed, he’d seen her use it against the TSA agents at the New Orleans airport, after her switchblade set off the metal detector.

“There is no weapon,” she said firmly, holding up the ornately decorated knife.

“We’re terribly sorry, ma’am. Our mistake. Have a nice flight,” the TSA agents said, in unison, doing everything but tugging their forelocks as they backed away from her.

It was easier to believe his decision to accompany Sonja was made for him than to accept the fact that he didn’t stand a chance on his own. Like it or not, the safest place for him, right now, was tagging along in a punk rock vampire’s shadow. Disgruntled by where his thoughts were taking him, Palmer glanced out the window, only to immediately wish he hadn’t.

There were things sitting on the wing of the airplane. At first he mistook them for children, although he knew it was impossible for kids to be clinging to the aluminum skin of a DC-10 at fifty thousand feet. Then one of the frail figures stood up, unfurling its bat-like wings as it embraced the jet stream, and shot up and away into the night sky.

There were at least six of the grayish-white creatures crawling up and down the length of the wing. Their arms were twice as long as their bodies, with long, bullet-shaped skulls and hairless bodies. As Palmer watched, the things scuttled along, bellies pressed against the plane’s vibrating skin, and, one-by-one surrendered themselves to the winds. One of the things shot upward, only to catch some turbulence and strike the side of the plan, right next to Palmer’s window. Instead of hearing a loud, juicy thump, he was surprised to discover that it made no sound upon impact. The thing peeled itself from the fuselage and peered through the window at Palmer.

Its eyes were large, lidless orbs the color of rancid butter, which hovered over a tube-like proboscis that dangled from the middle of what passed for its face. A long, worm-like tongue whipped out of the thing’s snout, momentarily tasting the reinforced Plexiglas that separated it from Palmer, before resuming its climb back to the wing.

Palmer turned to Sonja, cold sweat running down his back. “Am I seeing things?” he asked, gesturing to the window.

Sonja looked up from her in-flight magazine and leaned forward, peering out into the dark. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she assured him. “They’re real.”

“Great,” Palmer groaned, pulling the plastic shade down with trembling fingers. “That’s all I need right now.”

“They’re just afreeti, that’s all. Nothing to get upset about,” Sonja explained with a shrug. “They’re a form of elemental and they like hitching rides on airplanes. They’re harmless, unless you get a couple of warring tribes arguing over who gets to jump off first. The few humans who’ve seen them usually mistake them for gremlins.”

Palmer never wanted a cigarette more than at that moment. It was a lot easier to tell himself that this was all part of the rich and wonderful tapestry of life if he could soothe his jangling nerves with a double lungful of nicotine.

Sonja seemed to pick up on his anxiety and leaned forward, resting her hand atop his. “I know what you’re going through is tough right now. I remember the first time I started ‘seeing things.’ I thought I was going nuts! And I didn’t have someone to walk me through it, not at first, anyway. But, believe me, you’ll get used to it. Either that or you’ll go nuts. Most real psychics end up schizophrenic.”

Palmer stared down at her hand as it lay atop his own. This was the first time she had deliberately touched him, outside of grabbing his arm while saving his bewitched butt from the succubus, since their initial contact. He was expecting her skin to be cold and clammy, like that of a corpse, but it wasn’t. Suddenly the taste of Jimmy Eichorn’s blood flooded his mouth again.

He jerked his arm away and stood up stiffly, trying to control the tightness in his throat. “Excuse me a minute, would you?”

He screwed his mouth into a bitter grin as he made his way toward the first class cabin’s toilet. He tried the toilet door, found it locked, and then noticed the OCCUPIED sign. Sighing, he folded his arms and glanced back down the aisle, idly scanning the handful of passengers who could afford to fly First Class. His gaze momentarily settled on a heavyset man in a rumpled business suit rooting through the contents of an attaché case. Wisps of smoke wreathed the businessman’s frowning face. As Palmer stared harder at the florid-faced man, the smoke shifted and roiled, as if coming into sharper definition. Palmer’s heart beat faster as he made out the shape crouched on the businessman’s right shoulder. It looked like a squirrel monkey sketched by a skywriter and left to the mercies of a strong breeze.

Palmer quickly looked away, unsure as to what it meant but certain a cigarette would help him deal with it, whatever it was. The restroom door opened and Palmer dived into its solitude without waiting for the previous occupant to completely clear the way. His hands were shaking as he slammed the bolt home and pressed his back against the door. Inches from his knees stood the undersized, uncomfortable airline toilet, its stainless steel bowl beaded with droplets of sky-blue disinfectant. The equally tiny hand basin bruised his hip as he searched his pockets for a lighter. He glanced up at the smoke detector above his head and scowled.

The stewardesses were always making such a big deal about how passengers shouldn’t tamper with the damn things, so that probably meant they were pretty easy to fuck up. Still, the last thing Palmer needed was to have the bloody thing go off while he was messing with it. The last thing he needed was a snoot full of fire-extinguisher a thousand dollar fine slapped on him.

Palmer looked at the packet of cigarettes liberated from his breast pocket, then back up at the plastic disc dangling over his head like an electronic Sword of Damocles.

Fuck it.

He stuck some of the black cigarillos in his mouth and reached up to disconnect the smoke detector, giving himself a leg up on the edge of the toilet seat. As he did so, he found himself staring into the shatterproof mirror mounted over the sink. What he saw made him snort in self-derision. It was just like trying to cop a smoke in the boy’s room at Mater Delarosa Junior High back in Akron. His hair was starting to gray at the temples and he wore a tailored black trench coat instead of a school jacket, but there wasn’t that much difference between the fourteen-year-old Palmer suspended for smoking behind the gym and the thirty-nine-year-old preparing to hamstring the smoke detector.

Except for the smoke-monkey perched on the present-day Palmer’s shoulder like parrot.

“Yaaah!” Palmer shouted, losing his balance and plunging one of his feet into the toilet. The shock he’d experienced at the sight of the smudged gray thing crouched on his shoulder was quickly replaced by the fear of being accidentally sucked out through the toilet’s trapdoor, ala the bad guy in Goldfinger. Swearing viciously, Palmer yanked himself free, falling against the locked door with a loud thump.

“Sir? Are you all right?” It was one of the stewardesses, sounding both solicitous and suspicious. “Is something wrong? Do you need help?”

“I’m all right! I just made a little misstep, that’s all!” Palmer replied, glowering at the blue dye staining his lower leg. Luckily, his pants and shoes were dark enough to hide the discoloration.

He avoided looking in the mirror as he exited the cramped confines of the toilet, for fear of seeing the smoke-monkey again, while smiling sheepishly at the flight attendants grouped outside.

“Please take your seat, sir. We’re about to make our approach to San Francisco International.”

Pangloss’s chauffeur was waiting for them at the exit gate, holding a neatly printed placard that read S. Blue. They were shown to a stretch limo with tinted glass and a fully stocked bar in the back.

Before climbing into the back seat, Palmer’s gaze fell upon a gaunt woman dragging her luggage into the terminal. Although the woman was very frail, a smoke-monkey the size of a gorilla straddled her narrow shoulders. He bit back a laugh he knew would sound too high-pitched and brittle to be mistaken for sane.

Sonja stuck her head out of the limo and motioned for him to get in. “Come on, damn it! It’s just a tobacco demon!”

The moment the door slammed shut behind them Palmer popped one of his foul smelling cigarettes into his mouth and opened the liquor cabinet. His hands were shaking.

“What’s wrong?”

Palmer snorted, expelling a cloud of smoke. “What’s right about any of this? That bastard Pangloss tried to have my brains turned into guacamole dip, and here we are riding in the back of his fuckin’ limo! We’re walking into a trap, for Christ’s sake! It might as well have T-R-A-P spelled out in flashing neon letters!”

Sonja sighed and looked out the window. “Don’t worry about Pangloss. I can handle him. He’s not going to bother you. He got what he wanted. Adding you to his stable was merely a little lagniappe, not the main event.”

“You sound real sure of yourself.”

“I know Pangloss is crafty. I don’t doubt he’s got his own reasons for bringing me into this, but I don’t care what they might be. The only thing I’m interested in is Morgan.”

“So who is this Morgan, and why do you want his head on a spike?” Palmer frowned.

“Ever hear of Thorne Industries?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Old Jake Thorne is one of the last ‘bootstrap’ billionaires. He started off with nothing and ended up owning two dozen companies. ”

“Do you remember what happened to his daughter, Denise?” she asked, the corner of her mouth lifting into a bitter smile.

“Wasn’t she kidnapped or something back in the late Sixties, early Seventies?”

“That’s what everyone assumed. No ransom demands were ever made and she was never found,” she replied, her voice suddenly wistful.

“What does that have to do with you?”

“Because a long, long time ago, Denise met a man called Sir Morgan. Turns out he was a Noble alright, but not the kind Denise expected. He coerced her into ditching her friends and taking a moonlight drive in his chauffeured limousine. But once they were alone, he raped her, drank her blood, and, when he was finished with her, tossed her into the gutter from a moving car. She was found and taken to the hospital, where she remained in a coma for nine months. Then I woke up.”

“You’re Denise Thorne?” Palmer stared at her, open-mouthed.

Sonja shrugged. “That is open to debate. But something in me used to be Denise Thorne; perhaps it still is.” She returned her gaze to the window, staring at the dim outline of Candlestick Park in the pre-dawn fog. “There are a lot of things I do not know. But I do know one thing: I will send Morgan to hell, even if I have to escort him there myself.”

Pangloss’s lair was in one of the older downtown skyscrapers, dwelling in the perpetual shadow cast by megaliths like the Transamerica Pyramid building. The limo slid into the underground parking garage, depositing its riders before an old-fashioned elevator shaft secured by sliding metal gates and manned by an operator.

As Sonja and Palmer stepped out of the limo, the elevator operator, an old man in an ill-fitting uniform, folded back the accordion gate and gestured for them to enter. The interior of the car smelled of old leather, older money and cigars. Upon reaching the penthouse, the elevator doors opened to reveal Kief. The hulking ogre jutted his massive jaw forward as he flared his apelike nostrils.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” whispered to Sonja behind his hand.

The ogre’s lips peeled back in a rictus grin, revealing teeth better suited for a shark’s mouth, as he took a step forward.

“Kief! Heel!”

The ogre grunted and moved aside, allowing a narrow-shouldered man in a nondescript suit and tortoiseshell spectacles to step forward.

“I’m Doctor Pangloss’s assistant. He’s in the gymnasium right now. I’ll escort you to the waiting room…”

“I’ll see him now,” Sonja said flatly.

The assistant scowled at the clipboard he held in his hand. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

She stepped forward and snatched the clipboard from his hands, snapping it in two like it was a graham cracker.

The assistant’s pale face grew even pastier. “Follow me, Ms. Blue.”

The gymnasium was larger than any apartment Palmer had ever lived in, with parallel bars and other athletic equipment scattered about, and a state-of-the- art Nautilus machine crouching in one corner like a chromium spider. In the middle of the room were two men, dressed in the mesh faceguards and starched white tunics of professional fencers, dueling with naked cavalry sabers.

As Sonja and Palmer entered the gymnasium, one of the duelists drove his weapon through his opponent’s chest, neatly skewering the tunic’s red heart. The wounded fencer, still clutching his weapon, staggered backward, staring at the length of cold steel jutting from his breastbone. The victor gave a dry chuckle and turned to leave, only to have the wounded swordsman leap forward and, with a single swing of his blade, neatly decapitate him in midstride. The head, still encased in the protective face guard, bounced a couple of times before rolling to a stop near Sonja’s foot.

Pangloss removed his own visor and tossed it aside, revealing eyes the color of garnets, bisected by a narrow, reptilian pupil. “I’m glad that’s over and done with!” he exclaimed as he motioned for his assistant to pull the saber free of his chest. “What a bore! Always going on about those scars he got at Heidelberg. Why, I remember when it was called Bergheim.” The vampire winced slightly as the sword was removed, and blood the color of transmission fluid trickled from the wound. “Ah! That’s much better-it was starting to itch.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Doctor?” the pinch-faced assistant asked.

“That will be all for now, Renfield. I will see to Ms. Blue and her friend myself.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll have Kief dispose of Herr Grunewald.”

“That’s not the same Renfield,” Palmer scowled as the assistant left the room.

“What of it?” Pangloss replied as he unfastened the buckles of his tunic.

“Because Renfield’s dead. I saw him die!”

“My dear Mr. Palmer, the world is full of Renfields!” Pangloss sighed. “Just like it’s full of paper clips. You don’t christen each and every one you use with its own name, do you? The operative our charming Ms. Blue terminated in New Orleans was, indeed, one of my Renfields, but far from the only one. But you will soon find how interchangeable such creatures are, now that you’ve replaced the late, unlamented Chaz.”

Sonja raised her hand for silence. “Stop baiting him, Pangloss. Mr. Palmer is under my protection, but he’s not a Renfield. I’m here because you have something to tell me about Morgan. Now what is it, Herr doktor?

Pangloss clucked his tongue in disapproval. “The years have not improved your etiquette, my dear. You’re just as blunt as ever. But I suspect that’s what comes from being American.” He shrugged free of the bloodstained tunic, revealing a hairless chest as pale as milk and covered with the faint traces of hundreds of crisscrossing scars. The newest wound, the one piercing his heart, was already puckering into pink scar tissue.

Without realizing it, Palmer reached up and touched his own chest, tracing his near-fatal flaw. He wondered for a moment if Sonja’s flesh was equally scarred, then hastily pushed the thought aside.

Pangloss strode across the room and removed a green silk dressing gown from a peg near the door. “You still cling to certain human conceits, such as the ludicrous idea that time is valuable. You’re far too impatient, my dear! When will you realize that time is the one thing you have plenty of? Then again, I forget how young you truly are. While you are indeed a prodigy, my dear, in many ways you much like a backward child. Come; let us retire to more amenable surroundings.”

As they left the gymnasium, Palmer glanced over his shoulder and saw the ogre, Kief, pick up the severed head of the ill-fated Herr Grunewald from its resting place on the floor. The ogre peeled off the fencing mask and grinned as it lifted the dead man’s head to its slavering mouth. Palmer looked away, but he could still hear. It sounded just like someone biting into a big, crisp apple.

Marble art deco nymphs flanked the hearth while a panther carved from a single piece of obsidian crouched on the mantelpiece. There was a fire burning behind the ornate iron screen, but Palmer couldn’t feel it. Perhaps it was just the notorious San Francisco Bay damp getting to him, but he doubted it.

Pangloss stood at the picture window, his back to his guests. The fog was heavy, obscuring what little view was available at four in the morning. The swirling gray mist reminded Palmer a little too much of the tobacco demons he’d seen earlier, so he returned his gaze to the fireplace.

“You said you know something important about Morgan,” Sonja prodded. “Is that true?”

Pangloss glanced back over his shoulder at her. “Oh, it’s true alright. But I would rather speak to you in private. Shall we retire to the patio?” he suggested, gesturing to the sliding glass door that opened onto a rooftop garden.

Sonja glanced at Palmer, and then followed the elder vampire onto the fog-enshrouded terrace. The sea air was sharp in her nostrils, reminding her of blood. The Other’s voice stirred inside her head, admonishing her for having subsisted for so long on nothing but bottled plasma. She tried her best to tune it out: this was neither the time nor the place for the Other’s yammering to put her off guard. Despite his effete manner, Pangloss was dangerous; something she had learned the hard way years ago.

“You’ve changed, my dear,” Pangloss said, hands clasped behind his back as he stared into the fog bank. “You’ve matured. I noticed it the moment I laid eyes on you. You’re not as angry as you used to be.”

“Let’s just say I’ve discovered how to work within the system since the last time we met. I’ve learned to... focus myself. Now, about Morgan..?”

Pangloss turned to face her, and for a brief moment she was looking at an unwrapped mummy with red coals banked deep in its empty orbits. The vampire reached into the voluminous pockets of his dressing gown and retrieved an ivory cigarette holder with dry, twig-like fingers. The first time she’d glimpsed Pangloss’s true self she’d come close to screaming. But now, decades later, his desiccated appearance seemed almost normal.

“Ah, yes... Morgan. It always comes back to him, doesn’t it?” he said in a melancholy voice. “He was my greatest mistake, just as you are his. But at least I knew I created him.” Pangloss frowned and suddenly his features were once more those of a handsome middle-aged man. “It can be lonely for beings such as you and I, as you’ve no doubt discovered by now. Alliances with humans are, by their very nature, destined to be brief.

“Speaking of which, I congratulate you on claiming Palmer as your new Renfield. He’s much better spoken than that piece of trash you picked up in London. Tell me, does he still imagine himself the captain of his own will?”

“I told you he’s not aRenfield!”

Pangloss held up a hand in supplication. “You’re quite right, my dear! That was rude of me! Now, where was I? When I was younger—at least younger than I am now, anyway—I longed for companionship. At the time, I fancied myself quite ancient. I was what? Seven or eight hundred years old at the time, which means it must have been either the Eleventh or Twelfth century.

“I yearned to have an equal as a companion. But since I was forced to recruit my brood from serfs and peasants, with the occasional yeoman thrown in, most were unsuited for any intellectual pursuits beyond hunting down their next meal. Then I met Morgan.

“I was working for the Church as a barber surgeon at the time, gelding their most promising sopranos in order to create castrati. I was famous for having a low mortality rate, at least by the standards of the day. It was a good cover, as it allowed me to feed off the jealousies and infighting created whenever human sexuality is subverted. I fed well at the Vatican’s expense for the better part of two decades in that capacity. But Morgan’s arrival in my life changed all that.

“He was fourteen when I first saw him, but I instantly knew I had found what I had been searching for. He was the fifth son of a minor Frankish nobleman, who had donated the boy to the Church with the intention of him becoming a priest, but his excellent singing voice had drawn the attention of the choirmaster. Instead of gelding the boy, I chose to abandon my identity and leave Rome, taking him with me.

“We traveled Europe in the guise of uncle and nephew for several years as I schooled him in the ways of our kind. Morgan’s intellect was astounding, and he proved himself an apt pupil. He begged me any times over to be transfigured, but I withheld my benediction until he was thirty years old.

“My faith in his innate superiority was justified. For two centuries he was my constant companion. I was his Maker, but I never abused my status. I allowed him far more liberty than I’ve granted any of my brood, before or since. In the end it cost me dearly. On the two-hundred and twenty-fifth year after I re-made him in my image, Morgan turned against me. I’d underestimated the strength of his will—and his guile. He came close to killing me, just as you did.” Pangloss opened his robe and pointed to a long, ragged scar in the middle of his chest. “I nearly died from that silver blade of yours. It still hurts, even now.”

“If you’re expecting me to feel guilty, forget it.”

“I know better than to expect pity from you, or from any of our ilk.”

“So why are you telling me this?”

Pangloss’s smile was bitter. “When you love someone as much as I loved Morgan, and find that emotion betrayed...it becomes hate. You see, my dear, I loath him as much as you do. Also, it is in my interest that Morgan’s plan be foiled.”

“Plan?” Sonja’s ears pricked up, recalling Malfeis’ account of Morgan dabbling in something that had the Dukes of Hell gossiping.

The elder vampire chuckled. “His ambition is boundless, if nothing else. I’ve heard rumors his trying to create a brood of silver-immune vampires. If he succeeds, then he will change the Real World forever.”

“Do you know anything else?”

Pangloss shook his head. “He’s managed to screen his activities quite well. It took me five years to trace him to this city.”

“You mean he’s here? In San Francisco?” Sonja felt her stomach knot. She’d been hunting for so long, traveling the world in search of him, that to be told that she was in the same city with him was enough to make her head swim.

“I have no idea what name he’s going by, but I know he has dealings with a human realtor named Russell Howard. I suggest you start your inquiry with him.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Pangloss grimaced as if he’d sipped tainted blood. “The Ruling Class is too preoccupied with their own blood feuds and atrocity exhibitions, and refuses to take action against him. They think he’s gone mad and his plans will come to nothing. But they don’t know Morgan the way I do, what he’s capable of. The situation requires a wild card. And what better weapon to turn against Morgan than one of his own making?”

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Herr Doktor. What makes you think I can stop Morgan?”

“Because you scare me, my dear,” the vampire replied. “You have from the moment I first saw you.”

“Why is that, Pangloss?” Sonja asked as she removed her mirrored glasses. “What is it you see when you look at me?”

There was fear and loathing in the old vampire’s wine-red eyes, but he did not avert his gaze from her own. “I don’t know. And that’s what frightens me.”

Chapter Seven

Their hotel was a few blocks from the famed dragon gates of Chinatown and catered largely to tourists and Asian businessmen. As they approached the revolving door that lead to the lobby, a homeless person shuffled forward, gesturing and muttering unintelligibly. He—at least Palmer assumed it was male—was dressed in several layers of cast-off clothing, his feet wrapped in old newspaper like dead fish, and smelled of piss and cheap wine. For some reason Palmer found himself reminded of his Uncle Willy. Upon seeing the homeless man, Sonja appeared startled and quickly pushed past him. Perplexed by this uncharacteristic display of fear, Palmer glanced back at the ragged figure as it returned to the fog-shrouded doorway it had shambled from. In the diffused light from the street lamp, the old man’s eyes glowed like burnished gold.

By the time Palmer reached the front desk, Sonja seemed once more in control of herself. The night auditor, an elderly Chinese gentleman who moved with the grace of a tai chi master, did not seem terribly surprised by their unconventional physical appearances. After all, it was San Francisco.

They received connecting single rooms, although Palmer would have been more comfortable with separate floors. After he’d stowed his meager luggage in the shallow closet behind the door, there came a light rapping on the door that connected his room to Sonja’s. He opened it halfway and found himself staring into twin reflections of his own weary face.

“What do you want?” he asked, stifling a yawn.

“We need to talk.”

Palmer glanced at his wristwatch. It was just after five in the morning. “What about? That Morgan asshole?”

“Yes, and what Pangloss told me.”

Palmer grunted. “Okay. Just let me get a quick shower first, okay? I feel like a pile of dirty laundry.”

“You got a point there.”

“I know; that’s why my mama made me wear a hat.”

Sonja laughed, and Palmer was both surprised and disturbed to find he liked how it sounded.

Twenty minutes later, after a hop in the shower and a change of clothes, Palmer knocked on the connecting door. “Sonja?” No answer. He knocked a little louder, and this time the door swung open. He stepped into the room, squinting into the darkness, only to jar his hip against the dresser opposite the bed. Cursing under his breath, Palmer glanced up into what he thought was the mirror, only to find himself staring at a blanket that had been tossed over it.

Vampires cast no reflection, he thought to himself. It was one of the few rules he remembered from the movies he had consumed as a child with such an uncritical eagerness and a sense of wonder so sincere it bordered on epiphany. For a brief moment he was back in his old room in all its preadolescent glory. He could smell the chemical stink of airplane glue as the Aurora models of Hollywood monsters dried on his desk; he could see the stacks of Famous Monsters of Filmland and well-thumbed Dr. Strange comic books stashed in the back of his closet. The flashback was so sharp, so immediate; he had to steady himself to keep from being lost inside it. His hand dropped to the top of the dresser and touched something smooth and cold, his fingers closing about it before he realized he had picked up her sunglasses.

It felt weird, holding them; as if he’d stumbled across her eyes sitting alone by themselves atop the bureau.

“Don’t turn around.”

Her voice was at his shoulder. She’d come up right behind him without his being aware of it. Sweat broke out on his brow and upper lip. He wondered what her eyes looked like. He recalled Pangloss’s reptilian pupils, and fought to repress a shudder.

Sonja’s arm reached around and plucked the glasses from his hand. He could hear the quick rustle of material as she pulled on her robe.

“Okay, it’s safe to look now.”

Palmer turned around just as she switched on the lamp next to the bed. She sat with her back against the headboard, her legs curled up under her like a cat. She was wearing the same kimono he’d seen in New Orleans. Her hair, still damp from the shower, was plastered against her milk-pale forehead like wet feathers. She was beautiful and she scared him more than anything he’d ever known.

“Sorry I walked in on you like that. I knocked . . .”

“Forget about it.” She motioned for him to be seated in the room’s only chair.

Unsure of what else he could do, he lit a cigarette and alternated blowing smoke rings and frowning while she related what Pangloss had said about Morgan being somewhere in the city and his connection with the real-estate agent.

“So, do you think we can trust him?”

“No, but I believe him, nonetheless.”

“What did he mean about the Real World?”

“I think you already have some idea as to that.”

“Yeah, well, sure-but I’m new to this. I don’t know the rules or even if there are any.”

Sonja sighed and looked into the far corner, as if watching something. “Humans think they know what reality is, what life’s about. They think ‘I’m at the top of the food chain, so I get to decide what’s real and what’s not.’ What they don’t want to be real therefore doesn’t exist, except, perhaps, in their dreams. Or nightmares. So they end up watching the shadows on the wall of the cave, thinking that’s how the world really is, without ever looking at the things throwing the shadows. Most humans are both separated from and yet a part of the Real World. They can look right at the vampires, ogres, succubi, and vargr without seeing them for what they truly are. And then there are the seraphim, like the old man on the curb…”

Palmer remembered the way the homeless person’s eyes seemed to burn like newly minted gold coins. “Are these Sara Lees, or what have you, dangerous?”

“It’s hard to say exactly what they are,” Sonja said with a shrug. “But one saved my life once. Take that for what you will.”

As the conversation fell into a lull, Palmer was suddenly aware he was sitting in a hotel room with a good-looking, half-naked woman. Although he wanted nothing more than to slam the door between his room and hers and barricade it with furniture, part of him also wanted to stay.

“It’s late and I’m exhausted,” he said with an awkward cough. “And I’m not used to being this nocturnal…”

As he moved to leave, Sonja reached out and grabbed his hand. He looked down at her and saw his embarrassed, nervous face reflected in her shades.

“I’m sorry if I frighten you,” she said. “I don’t mean to. But sometimes it’s so hard to control what I am.” She smiled then; it was as sad and delicate a gesture as he’d ever seen.”It’s just that sometimes I need to be reminded what it’s like...” She looked away and dropped his hand.

She didn’t have to finish the sentence because Palmer could hear it in his head: And sometimes I need to be reminded what it’s like to be human. He wasn’t sure if it was telepathy or simple empathy.

“Look, Sonja, it’s not that I don’t find you attract—”

“Just go to bed,” she said sharply, refusing to look at him.

Palmer did as she said, uncertain as whether it was his decision or. Within five minutes he was sound asleep. He didn’t hear her leave.

Sonja struck out toward Chinatown, scaling the steep hill with strong, purposeful strides. It would be another hour or so before sun rise. She still had plenty of time for hunting, although soon the narrow sidewalks would be crowded with cardboard boxes filled with exotic vegetables. Chinatown awoke early, which meant she was taking a huge risk. But she was keyed up and she needed to hunt, for fear of her frustrated energy turning itself on Palmer.

You should have made him fuck you. He owes you his life, after all.

She grimaced and tried to ignore the Other’s words. She knew all too well what would happen if she weakened and let it have its way. She paused, sniffing the chill morning air. She could hear the distant thrumming of the cable car track and, fainter still, the ringing of church bells.

She knew what she hunted was attracted to the homeless, as they made easy targets, and there were certainly enough to be found on the surrounding streets. She strode past a weary-looking couple—a woman and a man—squatting on the lower steps of a recessed doorway, keeping guard while their child slept on a pallet of folded cardboard behind. The woman watched her pass with tired, fearful eyes.

Sonja paused and sniffed the air. The scent was strong. She was close. Very close. She ducked into a narrow alley lined with aluminum trash cans filled with garbage. The odor was nearly overpowering enough to mask the scent she’d been following. But not quite.

The vargr rose from its hiding place among the jumbled garbage containers, growling a warning at the intruder who had dared to interrupt its meal. The werewolf stood almost six feet tall, despite its crooked legs. The pointed, vulpine snout curled into a menacing snarl, exposing sharp teeth stained with fresh blood and flecked with flesh and gristle. The savaged remains of a bag lady at its taloned feet. The beast’s russet pelt bristled, raising hackles along its curved back as its thin, pointed penis slid from its furred pouch in ritual challenge.

Sonja hissed, unsheathing her fangs, causing the werewolf to blink in confusion. It apparently had not figured her to be a fellow Pretender.

“Whassamatter, fur ball?” she snarled. “You too lap dog to take on someone who can fight back?”

She realized she was being foolhardy. Although vargr lacked psychic powers, they were as dangerous as vampires, since they were incredibly strong and damn near immortal. She wondered what the hell she was trying to prove to herself.

The werewolf stepped forward, tossing aside the fifty-gallon garbage cans as if they were ninepins. The beast reeked like a wet dog. Sonja took out her switchblade and pressed the ruby stud in the eye of the dragon decorating its handle.

The vargr halted in mid-step, its growl dissolving into a whine at the sight of the silver blade shaped like a frozen flame.

She launched herself at the werewolf, knocking it to the ground hard enough to make it yelp in surprise. The two opponents wrestled on the filthy bricks, knocking over even more garbage cans. Startled rats scurried for cover as the werewolf and the vampire battled one another in the filth.

Sonja, bleeding from a score of cuts from the man-beast’s talons, cried out as the vargr sank its teeth into her shoulder, worrying her like a dog’s chew toy. She slashed at the lycanthrope and was rewarded by a yowl of genuine pain and the smell of spilled blood. The creature let go of her shoulder, allowing her to stagger back onto her feet. She looked up and saw the vargr fleeing down the alleyway. He was on the verge of reverting to his human persona, and the way he was hunched over, clasping his belly, told her he was trying to keep his intestines from spilling out.

Suddenly her vision began to dim and her legs buckled underneath her. The werewolf’s attack had weakened her more than she realized. When she opened her eyes again it was to discover she had blacked out while propped against the alley wall. A strange man was kneeling over, rifling through her pockets. Her glasses were still on, so he couldn’t see that her eyes were open and that she was watching him as he counted the money in her wallet. The man gasped in surprise as the dead woman suddenly grabbed him by his shirt front and pulled him close, as if to whisper something in his ear.

Then there was only fear.

Chapter Eight

Russell Howard was a satisfied man. He was only thirty-seven, but already well on his way to becoming a multimillionaire. It wasn’t that long ago that he had been yet another struggling real estate agent, handling third-and fourth-rate rental properties on the wrong side of Army. Now he had a Lamborghini and his new office took up half a floor in a sparkling new high rise. His clients were amongst the wealthiest in the Bay Area, if not the state of California, and his name and face regularly graced the pages of the Chronicle. Yes, Russell Howard was on his way to very big things, thanks to his oh-so-silent partner.

However, despite all the doors his partner had opened for him, he didn’t like to think too much about him, as it tended to make his palms sweat and his brain itch. Sometimes thinking about his partner even gave him nightmares. But if there was anything Howard had learned from life, it was that money made everything better. And as long as the money continued to roll in, he was content to rarely think about what his partner truly was.

Howard watched the lengthening shadows fall across the floor and walls of his office. He’d just finished a late afternoon conference with a client and was trying to decide whether to go home to his family or treat himself to an escort. If he put in a call to the agency in the next half hour, he could be home in time to read his four-year-old daughter a bedtime story. Right now her favorite was Yertle the Turtle…

Russell Howard personal secretary looked up from her desktop computer screen to see two strangers, a man and a woman, enter the reception area. She frowned and glanced down at the calendar on her desk. It was near the end of the day and no further appointments were scheduled.

“May I help you?” she asked, moving to intercept them as they headed toward the door leading to her employer’s office.

The man spoke first. “We’re here to see Mr. Howard.”

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, her voice dripping icicles as she eyed his companion’s outfit.

“No. But he’ll see us anyway,” the woman in the leather jacket and mirrored glasses said.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Howard is a very busy man and—”

“It’s time to go home,” the woman in the sunglasses said firmly.

The secretary turned around and went back to her desk, switched off her computer, retrieved her purse from its hiding place in the filing cabinet, and marched out the door.

Russell Howard was in the process of calling the escort agency when two strangers, a man and a woman, entered his office unannounced. The man was in his late thirties, dressed in dark pants, a bulky sweater and a black raincoat. His hair was short and wiry, with streaks of gray at the temples, and his chin was bisected by a narrow width of beard that made him look like a punk pharaoh. The woman was much younger, wearing reflective sunglasses, tight-fitting jeans, steel-tipped boots and a battered leather jacket over a T-shirt, with dark, unruly hair made her look like an exotic bird.

“Who let you in?” he scowled, hanging up the phone. He stabbed the intercom button on his desk. “Patricia! Get these people out of my office!”

“She’s gone home,” the man said. “You work her too hard.”

“Who are you?” he asked, uncertain as to whether he should be worried by the arrival of the odd-looking couple. “What do you want?”

“My name is Sonja Blue, Mr. Howard,” the woman said, stepping forward. “My associate here is Mr. Palmer. As to what we want: we are looking for information about a certain individual, one we have reason to believe you deal with on a regular basis.” She motioned to the filing cabinets lining his office. “Check ‘em out.”

The man called Palmer nodded and yanked open the nearest cabinet and began rifling the files.

“You can’t do that!” Howard shouted, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato. “Get out of here before I call the police!”

The woman called Sonja Blue clucked her tongue reproachfully. “I don’t think the person I’m looking for would appreciate you calling the cops, Mr. Howard.” She took another step in the realtor’s direction, menace oozing from her like an expensive French perfume.

Howard’s heart iced over. He was all too familiar with the way the woman handled herself, as if impervious to threats and accustomed to power. Just like his partner. He made a strange gargling noise that sounded like a deaf-mute’s attempt at speech, his eyes riveted on the woman as she advanced on him. When she leaned across the desk and grabbed him, it was with the speed and precision of a cobra striking its prey.

He could see his own terrified face, twisted and twinned, reflected in her glasses as she jerked him toward her pale, ice maiden’s face by his silk power tie. His skin oozed beads of sweat like tiny pearls of mercury which raced down his brow and the back of his neck. His fear made her smile, revealing canines as white as new bone and sharper than hypodermics. Howard moaned.

“Pangloss wasn’t lying about this weasel’s connection to Morgan,” she said over her shoulder to her companion, giving Howard’s tie an extra tug. The realtor gasped and coughed and tried to free his neck of the silk garrote. The Windsor knot he’d tied that morning was now the size of a garden pea and could not be budged. The sudden realization that he would have to take a pair of scissors to the two hundred dollar tie in order to remove it was almost enough to make him forget his predicament.

The woman who called herself Sonja Blue abruptly surrendered her grip on the makeshift leash and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his pool table-sized desk. Howard sat upright, attempted to straighten his ruined tie, and put on his best angry tycoon face, trying desperately to reassert himself.

“How dare you come into my office and threaten me in such a manner!” He thundered, reaching for the telephone on his desk. “I’m calling security right!”

“If you touch that phone, I will tear your fingers off, one by one, and feed them to you,” she growled.

Howard blanched and drew his hand back as if the receiver had transformed into a rattlesnake. “What do you want from me?” he asked sullenly.

“I want address of Morgan’s lair and the name he’s using to operate in this city.” When the realtor remained silent, she sighed impatiently and re-crossed her legs. “Mr. Howard, you know what I am. You know what I am capable of. I could pop your memory open like a raw cauliflower and get the information I need that way. But such a drastic measure would lower your IQ by more than fifty points. It’s up to you whether or not you end up reduced to a drooling imbecile.”

“I can’t tell you anything,” Howard insisted.

“Can’t?” Palmer prodded. “Or won’t?”

Howard pulled a monogrammed silk handkerchief from his breast pocket with trembling hands and mopped his forehead. “He’ll kill me if I say anything.”

“And I will kill you if you don’t, Mr. Howard,” Sonja Blue replied icily.

“Look, I don’t know what kind of beef you have with Morgan, but I haven’t done anything—”

“You traffic with monsters, Mr. Howard,” she said, her voice as sharp and cold as a guillotine blade. “Four hundred years ago you would have ended up in the hands of the Inquisition, your feet stuffed into iron boots filled with molten lead. I am far more reasonable than Torquemada, if not as patient. What is your connection to Morgan?”

“N-nothing important,” he stammered.

“Mr. Howard, Morgan would not bother to become involved with a dreary little human such as yourself unless you served some purpose useful to him.”

“Look, he gives me money and I buy and manage properties for him. Nothing illegal about that.”

“Indeed.”

“I also find places for him in the city. He moves around a lot, okay? Never stays anywhere more than a few months. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“No. Nothing at all,” she agreed quietly, apparently lost in thought.

“Sonja?” The man called Palmer was holding aloft a fat manila folder. When Howard saw it he felt his guts knot into a sheepshank.

She took the file and began flipping through the documents inside, occasionally looking up to regard Howard with that impassive, mirrored gaze. Howard patted his forehead with his damp handkerchief.

“Things are starting to make sense,” she said, handing the folder back to Palmer, returning her full attention to Howard. “All of those properties are in the worst parts of Oakland. They’re the one you purchased and manage for your partner?”

“Look, I can explain—”

“I’m sure you can, but you needn’t bother. I know that not all vampires are bloodsuckers. The ones as old and as powerful as Morgan prefer to feed on human despair, hate and anger. And what better breeding ground than some festering hellhole of a slum, where rats bite babies, old women are murdered for their Social Security, and addiction is a way of life?” She smacked her lips and patted her belly in a broad parody of hunger. “That’s good eating!”

Palmer snorted in disgust. “Fuckin’ traitor!”

Sonja nodded in agreement and leaned forward, fixing Howard with her unseen stare. “Do you know what humans such as yourself are called? By your masters, I mean, not your own species. You, Mr. Howard, are a Judas goat; you willingly lead your fellow humans onto the killing floor in exchange for a reward from the butchers. Judas goats like to think themselves immune. But all that means is that, once their usefulness is at an end, they are the last of the livestock to die.”

Howard scribbled something on a piece of scrap paper and pushed it across the desk toward her. “This is the address of Morgan’s condo in the Marina District,” he said nervously. “For God’s sake, don’t let him find out I told you where to find him.”

“And what name is he using?”

“Caron. Dr. Henry Caron.”

“Doctor?”

“Yeah, he’s a shrink.”

The man called Palmer spat in disgust and walked out of the room. As his companion glanced over her shoulder Howard reached for the drawer where he kept his gun. If he was lucky, he could get the drop on both on her and the man. He’d learned enough about creatures like the bitch sitting across from him to know that a bullet in the brain killed them as dead as any human.

It might look a little funny to the cops, but he could claim they were meth addicts who had shown up at his office, looking for trouble, when he’d refused to rent to them. Yeah, that would wash. If there was too much of a fuss, Morgan could pull a few strings and quiet things down. Yes, he told himself as his fingers wrapped about the grip of the chrome-plated pistol. As his fingers wrapped around it, this’ll be as easy as shooting clay pigeons.

Suddenly the woman leapt on to the desk, snarling like a leopard freed from its cage. One second she was sitting in a chair, the next she was squatting atop his desk like a gargoyle, her head thrust forward like an attack dog straining against its leash. The hair on her head bristled like a wolf’s hackle. Without realizing in, Howard instinctively wet himself. She jerked the gun out of his unresisting hand, studying it with mild distaste. She barked a humorless laugh as she turned the weapon over in her hands.

“You’d have to do better than this, buddy, if you want to stop me. I’ve metabolized more .22 slugs than Carter has little liver pills!” She hopped off the desk, leaving deep scratches in the six layers of lacquered finish. After a moment’s contemplation, she tossed the gun back to its owner.

Howard was too surprised to do more than ham-handedly catch it. He stared at the gun, then back at her before setting the weapon aside. He realized there was no way, even at such close range, he would be able to shoot her and still escape live.

“You’re holding out on me, Howard.”

The realtor shook his head in vigorous denial. “I swear I’ve told you everything I know about Morgan. What else do you want?”

“The truth.”

“I told you the truth!”

“Not all of it. You told me what identity Morgan is operating under, yes, and where I can find him when he’s in town. But I want to know where his lair is.”

“Lair?”

“Yes, lair. Lions have them. Bank robbers have them. And every Noble vampire has one, where they can retreat without fear of attack.”

“Look, I told you he has a place in the Marina, just off Fillmore . . .”

Sonja shook her head. “He moves every few months or so—you said so yourself. These places you mentioned are nests, nothing more. I want to know where he can be found when he goes to ground.”

“I don’t know where—”

“Pick up the gun, Mr. Howard.”

The surgical steel civility was back in her voice. Although he did not want to, Russell Howard picked up the discarded .22 by its muzzle.

“Place your left hand on top of the desk, Mr. Howard,” she instructed. “That’s right. Now spread your fingers. Yes, like that. Now wider.”

Howard stared in horrified silence as his left hand did as it was told.

“Now, hit your left hand with the butt of the gun,” she commanded. “Hard.”

Howard gave voice to a strangled cry of pain and terror as the butt of the pistol smashed down onto the middle of his hand. Although his fingers writhed like the legs of a crushed spider, he still could not move his left hand no matter how hard he tried.

“Again.”

As the gun-butt slammed into his hand a second time, something in his palm snapped like a green twig, and the taste of blood flooded his mouth. It took a few seconds for Howard to realize he had bitten through his lower lip.

“Where is Morgan’s lair?” Sonja asked calmly.

Howard whimpered as the pistol broke his left index finger. He hoped he would pass out before every finger on his left hand splintered, but was afraid she wouldn’t permit it.

“Ghost Trap!” he screamed.

“And what, exactly, does that mean?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face.

“It’s the name of this house in the Sonoma Valley,” Howard sobbed, sweat and tears dripping from the end of his nose in greasy drops. “It’s supposed to be haunted or something. Some crazy millionaire built it back before the Depression. I’ve told you everything I know, I swear. Please, just go away and leave me alone.”

“Very well,” she said, with a curt nod. “We will do as you ask. But remember, Mr. Howard: you cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulfur on your sleeve.” With that, the Blue woman turned and walked out of his office, rejoining her partner in the reception area. A second later, Howard was rewarded by the sound of them leaving.

He slumped forward, cradling his head in his good hand. He was shivering and sweating and stank of fear and urine. Part of him wanted to leap up and chase after the intruders, pistol blazing. But then he remembered how fast the woman moved, and the sound she made when she snarled at him, and his heart began to beat so fast it seemed to stand still.

He glanced at his Rolex. Only fifteen minutes had elapsed since the moment he first saw the strangers in his reception room. Fifteen minutes. One quarter of an hour. That was all it had taken to ruin his life. He picked up the automatic, even though the grip was still tacky with his blood. Although Howard was without religion or faith, he knew there was a Devil. He knew it with a certainty rare among even the most devout ecclesiastics. And no matter how fearsome and cruel the creature that called itself Sonja Blue had been, he knew his partner was a thousand times worse.

“Don’t you think you were kind of rough on that guy?” Palmer asked as they waited for the elevator to take them down to the lobby.

Sonja angled her head in his direction, but because of the glasses, Palmer was uncertain as to whether she was looking at him or back down the hall. She shrugged. “He is a Judas goat; a traitor to his species.”

“Yeah, but maybe he didn’t really know what Morgan was in the beginning..?”

“Oh, he knew, all too well. Just as the President knows what’s held in check within the walls of the Pentagon. He simply found it advantageous to pretend otherwise. He doesn’t even have a Renfield’s excuse of having been twisted against his will.”

The elevator car arrived, empty of passengers. As Palmer stepped inside he heard a muffled report from down the hall. He looked to Sonja, who merely shrugged.

“No matter how far up a Judas goat climbs, it will never get beyond the killing floor.”

Chapter Nine

“Are you sure this is the right address?” Palmer frowned.

“It’s the one Howard gave us. What’s the matter? Were you expecting a gothic castle with gargoyles and a moat?”

“No, but I thought it’d look, you know, different somehow.”

Sonja gazed at the building across the street from where they sat in the airport rental car. She didn’t want to admit it, but she’d been expecting something different, too. The pastel-colored single-family Mediterranean revival-style dwellings lining the curving street hardly looked like the kind of neighborhood to shelter a lord of the undead.

In the gathering dusk healthy-looking men and women, outfitted in expensive jogging gear with iPhone buds shoved in their ears, shared the streets with people walking their dogs. It was hard to picture Morgan joining his neighbors at the corner grocery to pick up a six-pack of Calistoga Water and a package of squid-ink pasta.

“Wait a minute! Someone’s coming out of the house. Is that him?”

Sonja stared at the middle-aged man standing silhouetted on the front porch. He was dressed in a charcoal-colored suit, his hair graying at the temples, his eyes shaded by tinted aviator glasses. She closed her eyes and pictured him as she last saw him: a debonair, jet-setting English playboy bent on a wild weekend in Swinging London. His strong, Cary Grant-like features rippled, revealing glowing eyes and sharp fangs. She heard the sound of his laughter as he forced her to take his cold member into her mouth...

She pulled herself free of the memory before she relived the agony and shame of being simultaneously penetrated by both penis and fang. She shivered, her breathing ragged.

“Are you okay?” Palmer asked, staring at her with concern.

Sonja opened her mouth to reply, but all she could do was shiver and gasp like a malaria victim. She wanted to leap out of the car and dash across the street so she could drive her silver switchblade through his heart before he could reach the Ferrari parked in the drive, but her legs and arms had suddenly become lead weights. All she could think of was the fact that she had spent decades looking for this creature, and now all she could do was sit there and stare at him.

Morgan tugged on a pair of leather driving gloves and slid behind the wheel of his sports car. If he glanced in their direction, neither Sonja nor Palmer noticed it. The moment the Ferrari disappeared down the street, headed in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, the lassitude that had gripped her abruptly loosened.

“Sonja—answer me,” Palmer said, giving her a jostle to try and wake her from what appeared to be a trance. “What’s wrong?”

“I was afraid something like that would happen,” she snarled angrily shaking her head to clear herself of the paralysis. “Morgan is my Maker. I was Made in his image, and therefore one of his brood. The second I saw him, all I could think of was killing him—and suddenly I couldn’t move!”

“You mean you were hypnotized?”

“No, it was more like my self-preservation instinct had been triggered. It was as if part of my brain considered killing Morgan the same as killing myself.”

Palmer rolled his eyes in disgust. “Are you saying, after coming all this way, you can’t lift a finger against this guy?”

“No!” Sonja snapped, her denial harsher and louder than it needed to be. She winced and fought to regain control of her temper. “It’s simply a matter of will. After all, that’s how Morgan broke free of Pangloss, all those centuries ago: he proved himself to have the stronger will.”

“What about you? Are you up to the job?”

“I’ll find that one out the hard way, when the time comes,” she replied as she opened the car door.

“Where are you going?” Palmer asked. “We just saw your guy leave.”

“Since we’re already here and know the monster of the house is out, I thought we’d pay a little visit,” she explained.

Palmer sighed and pulled a leather wallet from his raincoat pocket. He flipped it open to display his collection of lock twirls.

Sonja grinned. “I like a man who’s prepared.”

It took only a few seconds for Palmer to open the front door. There was a sticker affixed to one of the windowpanes set in a fan near the top of the door: Warning! This house protected by Phlegethon Home Security Systems!

“You think this place is actually hooked up to a genuine home alarm?” he asked.

“I doubt it,” Sonja replied. “Morgan isn’t the type to appreciate police—or even rent-a-cops—showing up.”

Palmer pushed open the door, wincing in anticipation of the high-pitched drone of a home security system. Silence. Sonja walked in ahead of him, moving cautiously into the vampire’s nest, her head swiveling like a radar dish. The living room was devoid of furniture, and to the left was an equally barren dining nook.

“He’s not much on interior decorating, is he?” Palmer whispered.

“This isn’t where he dwells. It’s merely a nest, kind of like a vampire equivalent of a place in the city,” Sonja explained. “It’s convenient for maintaining his identity, and can serve as a bolt-hole, if he needs one. Most Nobles have nests scattered all over the world, mostly in metropolitan areas, where neighbors wouldn’t consider an absentee owner unusual.”

Palmer walked into the stark white kitchen and opened the door of the burnished chrome refrigerator. It was empty save for an open box of baking soda. “Jesus, this place gives me the creeps,” he muttered.

Sonja sniffed the air. “Do you smell something?”

“Yeah, I think one of the neighbors is having a barbecue,” he replied, his belly rumbling in response to the aroma of roasting meat.

As they headed up the stairs to the second floor, the smell grew increasingly stronger. Sonja stopped in front of a closed bedroom door and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. Exchanging glances with Palmer, she opened the door and stepped inside, to be greeted by the odor of roast pork.

The bedroom was dark, save for the illumination cast by a small color television set atop a plastic milk crate. Sitting opposite in an easy chair was a middle-aged man dressed in a rumpled suit. The man watching the TV slowly turned his head towards his uninvited guests.

Palmer gasped aloud at the sight of the man’s lobster-red skin, as if he’d been boiled alive. The man did not stand up from his chair, but instead opened his blackened lips and let his mouth drop onto his chest as if the muscles in his jaw had been severed. Sonja instantly began to backpedal into the hallway.

Palmer stared in horror as smoke began to leak from man’s ears and nostrils, like an old cartoon, who then coughed out a ball of flame, which flew across the room and struck the wall a foot from Palmer’s head. The heat was so intense he could smell the hair on that side of his head starting to crisp.

Sonja grabbed him by the arm and jerked him out of the doorway and into the hall as the burning man got to his feet in preparation of vomiting another ball of fire. Palmer looked over his shoulder in time to see the burning man lumber into the hallway after them, moving as if unused to operating arms and legs. He also seemed to be sweating bullets, and then Palmer realized that he was actually dripping fat like a hot candle. The odor of frying meat was everywhere as the creature followed them down the stairs.

“We’re leaving! Okay? We’re leaving!” Sonja shouted.

The burning man halted its clumsy advance and stared in their direction with the opaque eyes of a baked fish. It was still staring as the slammed the door shut behind them.

“I said I’m sorry, okay?” Sonja grunted as she watched Palmer apply Solarcaine to the first degree burn on the side of his face. “How was I to know he was using a fuckin’ pyrotic as a burglar alarm?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this shit! I knew it!” Palmer exclaimed indignantly. “But do I listen to myself? No! So I end up nearly getting flash-fried by an escapee from a sideshow!” He winced as he daubed the last of the antibiotic cream onto his temple, which now throbbed in time to his pulse.

“C’mon, it’s not that bad,” she chided. “You’ve taken worse hits.”

“You could have gotten us killed!”

“No, I could have gotten you killed,” she corrected. “And for that I deserve the rebuke. I guess I was trying to prove I wasn’t scared of the bastard. I ended up being careless and stupid and you got hurt. That’s not something I want to happen.”

“You and me both,” Palmer said acerbically.

Palmer tried to find the strength stay mad at her. At first the pain and fear had been enough to keep his anger fueled, but now that the immediate danger was gone, it was starting to fade. He wanted to stay upset, because being angry at Sonja was a lot safer than liking her.

“I have trouble reminding myself how frail humans are,” Sonja said as she sat, Indian style, on the bed. “I keep forgetting you can’t regenerate like I do.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but ‘frail’ wasn’t one of them,” Palmer said with a grudging smile. “I notice you keep saying ‘human’ like it’s a brand name. Don’t you still consider yourself to be like us? You’re not like Pangloss—there’s still something alive in you.”

“You know, most vampires would consider being favorably compared to humans a gross insult,” she said with a laugh.

“Are you? Insulted, that is?”

She smiled again. “No, because I’m not an actual vampire.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, I’ve got all the traditional vampire signifiers: fangs, a taste for the ‘forbidden vintage,’ nocturnal habits, the powers of hypnosis and all that jazz. But I’m not a true vampire. I never died, you see. I’m a freak: a species of one.”

Palmer blinked in surprise. He’d assumed Sonja’s shunning of the daylight was because she would burst into flames if she stepped outside while the sun was up. It hadn’t occurred to him that she slept all day because she’d been awake all night.

“So you’re a living vampire?”

“In a way, yes.” She tilted her head, studying him from behind those unreadable mirrored lenses. “Do you like me, Palmer?”

His cheeks colored at the unexpected question and he suddenly became very interested in counting the tiles in the ceiling. “Well, uh, it’s just that I...

“I understand,” she sighed and uncurled her legs in order to stand up. “I’ll leave you alone…”

“Yes, I like you,” he replied, surprising himself with what he now realized was the truth. “How could I not? You’ve saved my life more times in the last few days than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“But if wasn’t on account of me, you wouldn’t be wrapped up in this mess. You’d be—”

“Stuck in the State Pen, getting my teeth knocked out and my asshole stretched, with no hope of parole,” he pointed out. “Believe me, as weird and as dangerous as this shit is, I could be a lot worse off right now.”

He walked over to where she stood and put his thumb under her chin, tilting it up so that she was looking into his face. He didn’t know why he did it; it just seemed like the thing to do—just like it seemed natural to pull her into his arms. He felt himself growing hard and that, too, seemed like a good thing. After all, it had been months since he’d last had sex…

He tried to shut the thought of Lola her from his mind, but it wouldn’t go away. He remembered how everything had seemed right and natural then, too, like some kind of beautiful, happy accident. He used to think he was too cynical to fall in love. But, as it turned out, at the heart of every cynic is a naïve romantic. And Lola played him for the fool every step of the way, manipulating him like a puppet on a string until he was no longer his own man. It had been a trap from the beginning, baited with honey and hot meat. And he’d never suspected a thing until he’d faced the butcher on the killing floor.

He pushed Sonja away, staring at her with horror-stricken eyes. “You’re doing this! You’re making this happen, not me!”

Sonja’s face abruptly crumpled, and for a heartbeat it looked as if she might cry. Then her features grew harden and the corner of her mouth curled into a humorless sneer.

“You fuckin’ idiot!” She snarled, her voice sounding as if her lungs were full of ice and razor blades. “You don’t even know what you really want, do you? You think you’re being made to do this? Okay, I’ll make you!”

Palmer cried out as her will poured into him, seizing his brain in an invisible fist, only to have it choke off into a groan. His whole body felt numb, as if he’d been given a massive dose of Novocain. Although he was not in any discomfort, the total lack of sensation was worse than any actual pain.

“Are you scared stiff yet?” she leered. “No? Then I’ll have to see about that.”

Palmer was vaguely aware of his penis moving, but it felt like it was a hundred miles away. The numbness began to withdraw, to be replaced by excruciating pain. He gasped and struggled to keep his eyes from bugging out of their orbits as his member began to swell like an overinflated balloon.

“I could keep you like this for hours, you know,” she said casually. “Days, if I so choose. Of course, your bladder would rupture and you’d be rendered impotent for the rest of your life. ” She tilted her head to one side, as if studying an unusual insect. “I don’t understand what she sees in you. She must have a real weakness for fuck-ups with a taste for destructive relationships.” As she laughed, her features began to shift, her lips swelling, her chin becoming baby-doll round, while her hair turned the color of raw honey and tripled in length.

“Hi, baby!” Lola grinned, her eyes screened by twin reflective mirrors. “Did you miss me?”

Palmer screamed and covered his eyes, suddenly free of the paralysis. When he lowered his hands, he found himself alone in his room. The connecting door between his hotel room and Sonja’s was standing ajar. Shivering like a half-drowned cat, he peered through the doorway and saw Sonja standing in the far corner of the darkened room, wearing here own face. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, as if she was struggling to keep something escaping her body as she banged the back of her head against the wall.

“Get out!” she growled. Palmer couldn’t tell if she was pleading with or threatening him. “Get out of here before I hurt you, damn it!”

Palmer slammed the door shut and locked it behind him with trembling hands. Then he heard her talking to someone—or thing—and what sounded like someone answering in a harsh, almost bestial voice. Then he heard furniture being trashed.

He retreated to the bathroom. He needed to take a shower. He wanted the hot water to turn his flesh the same boiled-lobster red as that of the burning man guarding Morgan’s nest. Maybe if he could scrub off a layer or two of skin, he’d feel clean again.

He sat on the toilet, smoking a cigarette with shaking hands, and watched the steam turn the mirror opaque, almost obscuring the tobacco demon squatting on his shoulder.

Ghost Trap

A savage place! As holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted.

—Samuel Coleridge, Kubla Khan

Chapter Ten

She found him drinking espresso in a dark, smoky coffee bar across the street from the hotel. The sun was going down and she had her shades on. He glanced up from his drink, shrugged, and motioned for her to take a seat.

He expected her to say she was sorry or try to explain herself in some way. Instead, she touched the top of his right hand with the index finger of her left hand. Palmer gasped as her mind flowed into his. It was as unlike the brutal intrusion of the night before as a lover’s caress from a rapist’s groping.

There were no words offered, only emotion, creating a sense of intimacy which was both thrilling and intimidating. The temptation to let go, to lose himself in telepathic rapport, was strong. But so was his sense of self. Recognizing his fear of being subsumed, she voluntarily broke contact. Palmer coughed into his fist and took another sip of espresso to steady himself.

“We’re still good,” he with a nod of his head.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the paperback book at his elbow.

“I decided to do a little research while you were getting your beauty sleep.”

She picked up the book, turning it so she could read the cover. “The Architect’s Guide to Haunted Houses?”

“I found it at City Lights Bookstore. Check out page 113.”

Sonja opened the book and began to read:

Northern California has long demonstrated an allure for the eccentric, the artistic and the wealthy. One of the strangest transplanted Californians to combine these elements was the architect-millionaire Creighton Seward (1870- 1939). Although brilliant and highly acclaimed in his lifetime, Seward has been lost in the shadow cast by his contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright. The fact that all but a handful of his buildings have been destroyed in the decades since his death has also helped condemn him to obscurity. Yet none who have glimpsed his ultimate creation can deny that Seward’s genius was as real as the tragedy that ultimately consumed him.

In 1907, after spending a decade designing competent but otherwise uninspired skyscrapers and homes for the upper class of the Great Lakes, Seward traveled to the Mediterranean with his young family, renting a villa on the island of Cythera. What truly happened there will never be known, save that Seward was found roaming its rugged hills, wearing nothing but the blood of his wife and children.

According to the Greek authorities who investigated the incident, a disgruntled former servant murdered the entire household with an ax while they slept. The only reason Seward survived was that he’d been awakened by the killer hacking his wife apart in the bed next to him and succeeded in overpowering him, smashing his attacker’s skull open with the very same weapon used to dispatch his hapless family.

However, there were rumors that the ax-murderer was actually Seward himself, although no one could provide motivation for him committing such a heinous act. That Seward later spent three years in a private asylum following his return from Greece did nothing to stop the gossip.

It wasn’t until 1910 that Seward resumed his work as an architect. And it soon became obvious that whatever he had endured that night on Cythera had changed him forever. His new work was so removed from his previous output that it seems impossible the same brain was involved in their design.

Seward took only three commissions in the five years between his return to public life and his subsequent self-imposed exile, and each was a masterwork, evoking Gaudi and foreshadowing H.R. Giger. Unfortunately, none of these structures remain standing, due to the so-called “Seward Curse. “

While each of these buildings (two private homes in Minnesota and the old Zorn Publications skyscraper in New York) were incredible works of art and widely praised by the intelligentsia of the time, they proved to be uninhabitable. Those who tried to live or work within these edifices soon found themselves stricken with terrible vertigo and a nameless dread that led them to flee the building in terror. On the few occasions Seward would speak of his later work, he stated that he had discovered, through the use of non-Euclidian geometry and quantum physics, a means of creating lines and angles that would pierce the space-time continuum. Whether this was so, or simply the ravings of a brilliant but sadly unhinged mind, will never be verified. However, it is believed that the newspaper reports of these incidences later provided the fantasy writer H.P. Lovecraft with the inspiration for his short story “The Dreams in the Witch-House.”

In 1916, shortly before the Zorn Building—with its magnificent chromium gargoyles and eye-twisting zeppelin mooring spire—was scheduled for demolition, Creighton Seward disappeared from the public eye and would not be heard of again until his suicide in 1930.

It was later discovered that Seward—the heir to an industrial fortune—retired to the Sonoma Valley of Northern California, where he set about creating a personal testament to guilt and madness: the infamous Ghost Trap Manor. Utilizing a previously-existing three-story mansion as what could best be called a nucleus, Seward commissioned a team of carpenters to construct a twisting maze of weirdly shaped and cunningly designed rooms and corridors that would, by the time of his death, cover acres of land and tower over six stories high. Ghost Trap Manor was finally completed in 1925, with Seward paying the workmen to keep the location—and exact nature—of his final masterpiece secret from the world.

It is uncertain whether Seward spent the last five years of his life in complete isolation, or if he shared the house with servants. All that is known is that there were no signs of a house staff when his nephew and heir, Pierce Seward-Burroughs, had the rambling house searched for signs of his uncle in 1930. It took three days to locate the body, as many of those who entered the house suffered attacks of vertigo and experienced bouts of anxiety and dread.

The exact manner of Seward’s demise is unknown, although he is believed to have starved to death. Notes found among the architect’s personal effects revealed the behind creating such an unconventional home. Apparently Seward believed the ghosts of his slain family were haunting him. Consumed by guilt and fear, he devised a labyrinth that would effectively “confuse” the pursuing spirits and keep them from finding him, thus explaining Ghost Trap’s bewildering number of blind staircases, doorways that open onto brick walls and windows set into ceilings.

Seward himself lived in the original “nucleus rooms” at the center of the sprawling mansion. Why the architect would decide to wander into the maze of “ghost rooms” without provisions or a map is unknown. For lack of a better explanation, the coroner listed his death as a suicide.

For over seventy years Ghost Trap remained shuttered and sealed against the elements as part of the Seward estate. Then, in 2002, it was sold to an unnamed party. Ghost Trap remains closed to the public, although whether anyone currently walks its halls is unknown.

On the page opposite the text was a partial schematic of the house’s floor plan. Sonja stared at it for a moment before realizing what she was looking at.

“I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed, pointing at the diagram. “Can you see it?”

Palmer frowned at the jumble of lines and curves. “It looks like a kid went crazy with a Spirograph.”

“You’re seeing it with human eyes,” she said disparagingly. “Look harder.”

Palmer returned his gaze to the blueprint, doing his best to focus his attention on it. To his surprise, the lines writhed as if suddenly taking on life.

“Holy shit!” he yelped, dropping the book. “What was that?”

“A Pretender glyph,” she explained. “What you’d call a magic sign, but built in three, possibly four dimensions.”

“So this Seward guy was a vampire or something?”

“Very likely,” she nodded. “Although I doubt he was aware of his heritage. There are plenty of half-bloods and changelings out there, living as humans, ignorant of their true nature and powers until something comes along to trigger it. They can be as dangerous as a full-blooded Pretender, though. Take Catherine Wheele, for example.”

Palmer tried to keep his jaw from dropping. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

Sonja’s manner abruptly stiffened. “I’d rather not discuss it. As I was saying, Seward didn’t just design a trap for unwanted ghosts—he created a psychic jamming station! This entire house is a protective charm! No wonder Morgan is using it as his lair! It’s probably the only place on earth he can relax without fear of being attacked on a psychic level. No wonder Malfeis didn’t have any information on Morgan—he’s practically invisible when he’s in there!”

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

“It’s clearly working to Morgan’s advantage right now. We’re going to need a powerful countercharm just to get inside the door.”

“So how do we go about getting one of those things? Open a box of breakfast cereal?”

“It won’t be that hard. Before we left New Orleans, I checked with Malfeis to find out about reliable dealers in the San Francisco area.”

“You mean they’re not listed in the Triple-A Guide? Color me surprised. So where do we have to go to find this wizard-for-hire?”

“Chinatown.”

Palmer knew they were in for trouble the moment Sonja ducked into the alleyway. Actually, it was less an alley than an over-large space between two restaurants. Since he had no choice, he followed her down its dark, narrow confines. He knew his gut instinct was correct upon hearing scrape of a boot on concrete.

Three men emerged from the shadows to block their way, emerging from the shadows. Palmer was pained by how young they were. The oldest of the group couldn’t be more than eighteen. The youths wore their hair short and choppy, and Palmer could literally see the aggression rolling off them in crackling waves.

The tallest of the trio, stainless steel shuriken decorating his leather jacket, stepped forward, his eyes fixed on Palmer. “This is Black Dragon territory. No dogs or whites allowed.”

Palmer looked to Sonja, who shook her head. She turned to the gang leader and said something to him in Cantonese.

The youth scowled, as his challenge had been aimed at Palmer. “Why are you looking for Li Lijing?” he replied asked in English.

“Maybe her geezer boyfriend needs a fix of powdered rhino horn from your uncle so he can get it up, Loo!” one of the gang members chuckled.

“All we want is to speak with the huli jing,” Sonja said, her voice deceptively calm.

“Huli jing? You’re talking crazy, white girl!” the gang leader sneered. “There are no foxes in Chinatown.”

“Loo! Hong! Kenny! Is this how you greet people looking for my shop? No wonder my business has been so poor!”

The youths jumped at the sound of the old man’s voice, looking more like children surprised at a naughty deed than dangerous street toughs. An elderly Chinese gentleman, leaning on an ornately carved cane, stood at the top of a set of stairs leading to a basement shop.

“Go play hoodlum somewhere else! I will not have you harassing paying customers! Have I made myself clear?” The old man exclaimed, poking Loo in the ribs with the end of his cane. The boy looked embarrassed but did not protest.

“Yes, Uncle,” he muttered obediently.

“Go now before I change my mind about paying you for the work you did straightening up my stock room!” The old man watched the leather-jacketed youths retreat, shaking his head in dismay. “The young today! No respect! You must forgive Loo, my friends. He works for me, opening and sorting boxes of herbs from the old country. He is a good boy, but his brain is too often filled with foolish Western nonsense—no offense.”

“None taken,” Sonja replied with a smile. “I presume I am speaking to the honorable Li Lijing?”

The old man nodded, smiling cryptically. “And you are the one they call the Blue Woman. Malfeis told me I might expect a visit from you. That is why I was eavesdropping. Loo is a silly boy, but I have a fondness for him. It would pain me to dig a grave for one so young. Ah! It is rude of me to keep you chattering on my doorstep! Please, come inside and make yourself comfortable.”

The apothecary’s basement shop was dark and close, the ceiling barely a foot above Palmer’s head. Various herbs hung from the low rafters, filling the space with the thick aroma of sandalwood and ginseng. Palmer noticed a stuffed Chinese crocodile hanging suspended in the corner and a bewildering collection of subhuman skulls in an open cupboard—one of which boasted a cyclopean eye socket and a large horn growing from its forehead.

“You and I certainly do not need it, my dear, but your companion would no doubt appreciate some additional illumination,”Li Lijing said as he lit up a pair of silk lanterns. He then turned to face Palmer, a sharp smile on his long, narrow black velvet snout. “Is that not so?”

Palmer let out a startled yelp and stepped back from the humanoid fox standing before him. “You didn’t say anything about him being a werewolf!”

Li Lijing shook his pointed ears in disgust, a pained look on his vulpine face. “I am huli jing, not vargr! Would you compare a panda to a grizzly bear? A stallion to a mule? A samurai to a priest?”

“Forgive my companion, Li Lijing,” Sonja apologized. He is new to the Real World and has yet to meet a huli jing, much less a vargr. He meant no offense.”

The huli jing snorted as he hobbled through the shop, using his cane to balance himself on his crooked legs. “I have come to expect such ignorance from humans. Still, it is a sore spot with me. But I cannot find it in myself to dislike their species. I have lived long among humankind. Why, I even took a couple as wives!” He made a barking sound that Palmer assumed was laughter. “I will tell you a secret! Loo is not my nephew, but actually my great-grandson! Not that he knows this. As far as he is concerned, I am merely a good friend of the family who arranged for his father to escape the Mainland. He calls me Uncle out of respect, but is ignorant of his blood. I favor the boy, as he reminds me of my son—his grandfather—who was lost to me during the invasion of Manchuria. Ah, but I must be old and foolish to succumb to such sentimentality, yes?”

The fox-headed man sat down behind a low teak desk carved with scenes of kei-lun, the Chinese unicorn, frolicking in the perfumed gardens of K’un Lun, the City of Heaven. “Now, what is it I can do for you, my dear?”

“I need a countercharm.”

“I see.” The huli jing pushed aside a scroll of rice paper and his collection of bamboo calligraphy brushes and picked up an abacus. “What kind of spell are you interested in negating? Protection? Ensorcellment? Bedevilment? Containment? There is a difference in the prices, you know.”

Sonja motioned for Palmer to hand the wizard the book containing the blueprint of Ghost Trap. “You tell me. I’m nowhere as adept at reading Pretender glyphs as you, Honorable One.”

Li Lijing accepted the compliment by fluttering his pointed ears. “You do me great honor. Now, as to this particular charm...” He pondered the drawing, scratching his muzzle in contemplation. “This is a protective ward of immense potency. You were wise to consult me. Anyone—Pretender or human—trying to violate these lines of power would be risking their sanity, if not their very lives!”

“Can you do it?”

“Of course I can do it! Did I say otherwise? It’s just that the preparation of the proper countercharm will not be without some expense... or danger.”

“I’m willing to pay whatever’s necessary to procure it.”

The huli jing smiled as if he’d just been handed the key to the henhouse. “Malfeis didn’t lie, for once. You are a class act!” The apothecary barked another laugh and returned to his estimate, the abacus beads rattling like hailstones on a tin roof. “I can have the appropriate countercharm ready within the week.”

“Twenty-four hours.”

Li Lijing looked down his long black nose at her. “That would quite a bit extra, you know.”

“Just do it.”

The abacus beads were flying now. “Very well. Loo will deliver it to your hotel once I have it ready. I advise that your companion here abstain from handling it. Frankly, a charm of this magnitude has no business even being looked at by humans. No offense. Now, as to the matter of my bill…”

Sonja produced an envelope from inside her jacket and tossed it onto the desk. “I trust this will prove satisfactory. They once belonged to Hitler. I have papers that will verify it.”

Li Lijing snatched up the packet and dumped its contents—a collection of yellowed human teeth—into his hand. “Such documentation isn’t necessary! Their power speaks the truth. Yes, this is most satisfactory. It is always a pleasure doing business with a client of such refined sensibilities as you, Mistress Blue!”

Chapter Eleven

“Sonja? You okay?” Palmer asked as he glanced into the rearview mirror. Sonja was sitting in the back seat of the rental car, and in the bright sunshine she looked pale and unhealthy, out of her element. She grimaced and smacked her lips as if trying to rid her palate of an offensive aftertaste.

“Daylight. Phooey.”

“I thought you said you weren’t allergic to sunlight.”

“I’m not. But I am nocturnal. Being awake during the day is...unnatural. Believe me, if I was allergic, you’d know it! Vampires exposed to direct sunlight develop a speedy case of skin cancer; it’s not for the weak of heart— or stomach.”

“Sounds like it.”

“So what do you want? Or were you just curious to see if I’d dissolve a la Christopher Lee?”

“I just wanted to see that charm Li Lijing gave you, that’s all.”

“You heard what he said about humans handling it,” she sighed.

“I didn’t say I wanted to touch the damn thing, I just want to see it. Is that okay?”

“I guess so. It might help if you understood the kind of dynamite we’re playing with.”

“It’s that powerful?”

“You’ll see. Pull over at the next rest station. The last thing I need is to have you plow the car into the back of a semi by mistake.”

“I never mistakenly slam into the back of trucks,” he assured her. “It’s always on purpose.” A few minutes later, Palmer pulled the car into a roadside rest area thoughtfully provided by the California Highway Commission. He killed the engine and turned around in the front seat, facing Sonja. “Okay, let’s see this powerful juju.”

Sonja pulled a package wrapped in blue tissue paper out from under the seat and handed it to the detective. “Remember, you asked for it!”

Palmer wrinkled his nose as he caught scent of the strong spices as Sonja unwrapped the talisman. Upon seeing the thing, he instinctively drew back as if it was a poisonous spider. He felt a bitter surge of vomit scald the back of his throat, but he could not look away from the candle made from a withered, severed hand that lay nestled in the blue tissue paper like a perverse corsage.

“It’s horrible! What is it?”

“It’s a Hand of Glory,” she explained. “Lijing assures me that it is especially potent.”

“It’s got six fingers!”

“Yes, that’s supposedly the secret of its power. It once belonged to a Mayan priest-king put to death by the conquistadores. There was one particular royal family that had six fingers and toes. It was considered a sign of divinity. They were known as Chan Balam, the Jaguar Lords. The Hand of Glory allows whoever uses it to enter any kind of locked room of house—making it perfect for our unannounced visit to Ghost Trap.”

Palmer swallowed the burning knot in his throat and watched an elderly man in tan slacks and a cream-colored windbreaker lead a miniature schnauzer toward a grassy stretch marked “Pet Path.” He suppressed the urge to get out of the car and sprint for the nearest parked car.

As Sonja prepared to re-wrap the grisly candle, she lost her grip on the Hand of Glory, which fell onto the front seat of the car, next to Palmer.

“For crying out loud,” he groaned in disgust. “Why don’t you just mount it on the dashboard so everyone can enjoy it?”

The idea of touching the Hand of Glory was repugnant beyond belief, but if anyone got a good look at what was on the front seat, every CHIPS officer north of Los Angeles would be breathing down their necks. Grimacing in distaste, Palmer picked up the talisman.

Suddenly he was somewhere warmer, where the screeching of macaws and the screams of howler monkeys echoed from the lush green canopy outside. A naked brown child sat framed in the doorway, playing with a baby spider monkey on a leash. The child’s forehead was oddly shaped, sloping backward. At first Palmer thought the boy was mentally handicapped, but then the child smiled and turned his face toward him, revealing dark eyes that sparkled with a natural wit. Confused, Palmer scanned the room he found himself in, frowning at the detailed charcoal renderings of Mayan dignitaries offering sacrifices to the gods decorating the whitewashed stone walls. Above his head hand-woven nets full of museum-quality Pre-Columbian pottery hung from brightly painted, ornately carved rafters. The naked child laughed at his pet’s antics, lifting a six-fingered hand to his mouth. Palmer glanced down at his own body and saw he was seated, cross-legged, on a stone bench carved in the likeness of a jaguar. He stood up and walked to the doorway. He was wobbly on his feet and had to steady himself by placing six-fingered hand against the wall. He brought his other hand to his face and felt the stingray barb piercing his lower lip and the ritual scars on his cheeks. His gaze dropped to his borrowed body. He knew he should be alarmed by the sight of a second stingray barb skewering his penis, but, instead, felt strangely disconnected from the mutilations done to his flesh. The child looked up at Palmer from his place on the stoop and smiled. The baby spider monkey squatted on the boy’s shoulder, chattering to itself as it searched its master’s hair for vermin. Suddenly William Palmer, never married and an avowed enemy of small children, knew how it felt to be a husband and a father. Somewhere in the jungle, a jaguar screamed.

“Palmer! Palmer, are you all right? Answer me, damn it!”

Sonja was in the front seat of the rental car, shaking him by the shoulders. She actually looked scared. Palmer wondered if he should feel honored or worried.

“Damn it, Palmer! Say something! Don’t make me come in there and get you!”

“What happened?”

“You’re back. Good. Where did you go?”

“I’m not sure, but I think I was in a jungle somewhere in Central America a long, long time ago. What’s that taste in the back of my mouth?”

“Blood,” Sonja replied as she pulled a linen handkerchief from her pocket and offered it to the dazed detective. “You had some kind of seizure. Blood started running out of your nose. I was afraid you were going to swallow your tongue. Now, what’s this about you being in Central America?”

Palmer shook his head in disbelief as he dabbed at his upper lip. “It was weird. It wasn’t like a dream. It was more like being there, or remembering being there. I was sitting in a stone house and I could hear the birds and monkeys outside, just like in the Tarzan movies. There was a boy...” He frowned as he tried to recall more of his vision, but it was already fading.

“Palmer, do you believe in reincarnation?”

“I never really gave it much thought, to tell you the truth. Just like I never gave much thought to vampires and werewolves.” His smile wavered and Sonja saw the fear in his eyes. “Is it true, then?”

“To a point. There is such a thing as reincarnation. But not every human being is reincarnated. I don’t know how it works—nobody does for sure, unless it’s the seraphim, and they’re not talking. But there are always a number of humans who are preborn. The Pretenders call them Old Souls. Most never know who—or what—they were before, and that’s as it should be. But every now and again, they receive a glimpse of their previous selves, usually when a random incident cues a buried memory. Or, as in your case, apparently, you accidentally touch the remains of a previous incarnation.”

Upon hearing this, Palmer hunched forward, resting his forehead against the steering wheel.

“You spoke while you were in your trance,” Sonja said gently. “Are you aware of that?”

“What did I say?”

“It sounded like ‘Tohil.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Palmer closed his eyes and the sound of macaws calling to one another from jungle perches filled his ears. “Yes. It was my son’s name.”

“So that’s Ghost Trap. The guy who built it really was crazy!” Palmer exclaimed as he peered through binoculars at the valley below. Not that he needed them to see Creighton Seward’s fevered brainchild, as the rambling mansion filled the small dell to the point of overflowing.

“You can still make out the original house in the middle,” Sonja said, pointing to the center of the grandiose concoction of towers, turrets and flying buttresses. “It looks like a spider squatting in the middle of a web. See anything?”

Palmer shook his head and lowered the binoculars. “Sealed up like a fuckin’ drum. All the shutters are closed. But I spotted an old stable off to one side with Morgan’s sports car in it. Our boy’s here; no doubt about it.”

“I never thought otherwise,” Sonja muttered darkly. “I can feel him.”

“Just looking at that house is making my head hurt.” Palmer said, massaging the bridge of his nose. “I can’t imagine anyone actually living in that monstrosity!”

“Creatures like Morgan don’t live,” Sonja scowled. “They exist.” She glanced up at the afternoon sky, careful not to look directly at the sun. It had taken them three hours, following narrow asphalt roads that twisted through the hills like black snakes, before finally locating the isolated valley that separated Ghost Trap from the rest of the world. . There were still several hours to go before sundown, when Morgan would stir from his daily coma. Still, in a place like Ghost Trap, where daylight rarely pierced its heart, the vampire lord could very well be up and about inside its labyrinth-like belly.

“Put a sock in it,” she muttered to the Other as it whined for the seven hundredth and fifty-second time that the sunlight was making it sick.

Palmer looked up from his binoculars. “What did you say?”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” she replied tersely. She was loath to admit it, but she agreed with the Other. She was tired and in bad need of recharging. She used to be able to function perfectly well during the day, but at that exact moment she felt like she’d just come off a weeklong drunk. It was all she could do to fight the urge to crawl inside the trunk of the car and enjoy a quick nap.

“There’s no point in putting it off,” she sighed. “I’m going down there.”

Palmer sucked on his lower lip. “You sure it’s safe?”

She barked a humorless laugh. “It’s never going to be safe! But I stand a better chance going in while the sun is out. Hopefully, he won’t be expecting anything. And if Lijing’s talisman does what it’s supposed to, they won’t know I’ve breached their defenses until it’s too late to do them any good. What about you? You packing?”

Palmer pulled a loaded .38 special out of his waistband and held it up so she could see. “Figure this’ll do the job?”

“Honey, you shoot anything in the brain—human or not—with that damn thing, you’ll kill it!”

He nodded and returned her smile. Sonja gave him a thumbs-up signal and began walking down the hillside toward the mansion. Palmer watched as she moved into the trees and made her way down the rugged hillside. When he could no longer see her, he focused his binoculars back on Ghost Trap. He quickly scanned the windows and turrets for signs of movement. He soon learned that if he let his eyes linger too long on any particular architectural detail it made his eyes water and his head hurt.

Suddenly his attention was caught by a fleeting glimpse of a pale, moonlike face glowering from a fifth-floor window. His heart thumped a 4/4 beat as he fiddled with the binoculars’ field of focus for a closer view. But by the time he could refocus, the face was gone, the window once more shuttered—assuming it had been open in the first place. Perhaps it was an illusion created from staring too long at the weirdly contorted house. And if had been real, whose face was it? It certainly wasn’t Morgan’s. He contemplated trying to call Sonja on her cell phone and tell her what he’d seen, but he’d lost service at least two valley back.

Just then he saw a shadow emerge from the tree line near the mansion’s ruined gardens and flit through the surrounding rosebushes, which had grown into a thorny tangle. He watched, awed by Sonja’s supernatural grace as she deftly avoided empty goldfish ponds and crumbling statuary and made her way to what had once been the coal cellar.

“That’s m’girl!” he grinned as she yanked the heavy padlock off the cellar doors. A second later she was gone, swallowed by Ghost Trap. Whatever dangers lay hidden within the mansion’s sprawl, she would have to face them alone. And maybe, if he was lucky, she would never come out.

Chapter Twelve

Sonja took a deep breath and paused to orient herself against the wave of nausea that hit her the moment she entered the confines of the house. The empty coal cellar tilted under her feet, as if the ground were made of Indian rubber. Something in her jacket twitched.

She removed the Hand of Glory and saw that the position of the six fingers had changed. Hoping that was a good sign, she returned it to her pocket. She took a cautious step toward the stairs leading to the rest of the house, then another. The nausea was gone, although she was unable to shake the feeling of disorientation.

The first floor was dark, the bare wooden boards furry with dust. As she walked through the series of oddly shaped interconnected rooms, it became clear to her that they had never ever been furnished. Some rooms hadn’t even been plastered and painted, the exposed wooden pining giving the smaller rooms an austere, almost monkish appearance.

Everywhere she looked, the demented genius of Ghost Trap’s creator was on display, as her eyes were drawn to lines that both originated and intersected beyond the field of normal vision. She doubted a normal human could withstand more than an hour’s sustained exposure to Ghost Trap’s peculiar brand of architectural design without losing consciousness or going mad. The weirdly angled doorways and out-of-kilter rooms reminded her of the starkly rendered expressionist scenery from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The second floor was much like the first, as was the third. The house was indeed as huge and maze-like as she’d feared. Judging from the thickness of the dust coating the floorboards and banisters, she doubted that the section of Ghost Trap she found herself in had seen any visitors—human or Pretender— since the day Creighton Seward’s body had been recovered.

Still, she could feel Morgan’s presence, hidden somewhere within the massive sprawl of zigzagging walls and staggered staircases. However, whether the vampire lord was hiding in the attic, the basement or the room next door was impossible for her to divine. She hoped if Morgan was equally conscious of her intrusion, that he was just as helpless in pinpointing her exact location.

As she left a sitting room with faded, green patterned wallpaper and an upside down fireplace made from Italian marble, she glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye. Turning to get a better look, she found herself staring at a little girl no more than five.

Sonja knew the child to be dead because she could see through her. The ghost-child wore old-fashioned clothes and held a porcelain doll in her chubby arms. Both the girl and the doll had golden hair that fell to their shoulders in ringlets. The face of the china doll was marred by a hairline fracture that ran from its brow to the bridge of its nose.

“Hello, little girl.”

The phantom child smiled and lifted a hand still chubby with baby fat and waved a greeting in return.

“Little girl, do you know how I can get to the nucleus of the house?”

The ghost shook her head. Sonja wished the tiny specter would speak but knew that the dead often lost the ability to communicate coherently after a few years. The dumb show might be aggravating, but at least it was reliable.

“Is there anyone around who does know?”

The little girl smiled again, this time nodding. She turned and signaled for Sonja to follow her. Sonja tried not to look at the brains spilling from the back of the child’s smashed skull.

The ghostly child flickered from room to room like a pale but playful moth while Sonja dutifully followed. Finally the phantom entered a long, narrow room paneled in darkly stained walnut with thirteen bronze satyr faces studding the walls. On closer inspection, Sonja saw old-fashioned gas jets protruding from the collection of grotesquely leering mouths.

Suddenly there was an icy draft, as if someone had thrown open the door of a massive freezer, and the gas jets burst into flame, filling the room with the odor of perfume and blood.

The tiny ghost child hurried over to where her mother stood revealed, dressed in a high-collared morning glory skirt. The phantom woman’s hair—the same golden hue as her daughter’s—was puffed at the sides and pulled into a knot atop her head. Even with the left side of her face reduced to pulp, the eye hanging from its stalk onto the ruined cheek, it was obvious she had been a stunningly beautiful woman in life.

The ghost-child tugged at her mother’s skirts and pointed at Sonja. Her lips moved but all Sonja heard was a skewed, half-speed garble.

“Mrs. Seward...

The dead woman looked up, surprised at being recognized. The undamaged side of her face frowned.

“Mrs. Seward, I need your help in finding my way to the nucleus of Ghost Trap,” Sonja implored, her hand outstretched.

The phantom woman looked down at her daughter, then at Sonja. As she opened her mouth, the flames issuing from the gas jets intensified. Mrs. Seward, now looking more terrified than terrible, motioned for her child to leave. The little girl obeyed, rolling herself into a ball of witch fire and bouncing from the room. There was a distant whistling sound, as that of air being sliced by an axe, followed by a hollow booming. Whatever was creating the noise was making its way toward the room Sonja was standing in.

The late Mrs. Seward gestured for Sonja to follow her as she moved to one of the walnut panels set into the wall. Her long, bell-like skirt left the thick dust on the floor undisturbed. She pointed to the molding where the plaster met the paneling and then passed through the wall, leaving Sonja to locate the hidden catch that opened the secret door. The booming sound was so close it rattled the secret panel as it closed behind her.

Mrs. Seward was waiting for her, glowing in the gloom of the secret passage like a night-light. Sonja followed her spirit guide through the narrow passageway to a cramped circular staircase that pierced Ghost Trap’s various levels. Mrs. Seward motioned for her to go downstairs.

“How many levels? One? Two?”

The dead woman held up two transparent fingers and mimicked opening a door. Sonja nodded to show that she understood and began her downward climb. After a couple of steps she paused and looked back at the ghost-woman.

“You’re trapped in this place, aren’t you? You and the children?”

The ghost nodded, nearly dislodging her dangling eye.

“How can you be freed?”

The ghost hastily traced letters in midair. The ectoplasm hung suspended for a few seconds before wavering and losing shape, like a message left by a haphazard skywriter: Diztroe Tarappe.

Although the dead were notoriously bad spellers, she understood what she meant. Before Sonja could ask anything else, Mrs. Seward disappeared as suddenly as she had manifested. Sonja shrugged and resumed her descent into the bowels of Ghost Trap.

On the second level she found a narrow oak doorway at the base of the stairs. She could tell the door opened inward, but other than that had no idea where it might lead or what might be on the other side. Taking a deep breath and hoping it didn’t lead to a room full of hungry ogres, Sonja grasped the handle and yanked it open.

She found herself faced not by tigers, but with a lady.

The woman was seated in a tastefully upholstered easy chair, reading a paperback romance novel, her slippered feet resting on an ottoman. The room seemed very cozy, in an old-fashioned, Victorian way. Somewhere nearby a grandfather clock measured out the afternoon. A small, cheery fire crackled away in the fireplace.

Sonja frowned and moved further into the room, allowing the secret door to silently close behind her. The petite African-American woman seated in the chair had yet to notice the intruder in her sitting room. Just as she began to wonder if she was looking at yet another ghost, albeit a bit more opaque than the last, the woman looked up from her reading and smiled at her, revealing eyes the color of claret. Sonja’s right hand instinctively closed on the switchblade in her pocket.

“Hello,” said the woman, putting aside her book. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you come in. Are you one of our Father’s servants?”

Sonja adjusted her vision, scanning to see what the vampire sitting before her truly looked like. To her surprise, she did not reveal herself to be a wizened crone or rotting corpse, but remained exactly what she appeared to be: an attractive young African-American woman in her late twenties. As she focused harder, an aura abruptly appeared about the other woman’s neatly corn-rowed head like a halo of fire. Sonja gasped aloud in shock and surprise. The last time she’d seen such a thing was in the mirror.

“Is there something wrong?”

Sonja heard Pangloss’s voice echoing in her ears. He is plotting on revolutionizing Pretender society... Something about creating an army of silver-immune vampires...

As she struggled to her feet, Sonja suddenly realized the vampire was pregnant.

It worse than even Pangloss could have imagined.

Chapter Thirteen

“Is something wrong? Should I call Dr. Howell?” The pregnant vampire asked as she reached for a cellular phone resting on the table next to an array of medication vials.

Before she had a chance to touch the phone, Sonja leapt forward, wrapping her free hand in the other woman’s abundant braids and yanking her head back, exposing her throat. She pressed her switchblade against its pulse point.

“Who are you?” Sonja growled. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m Anise,” the pregnant vampires said, speaking loudly and slowly, as if communicating with an emotionally disturbed child. She was trying not to sound frightened as she clutched at her swollen belly. “Why are you doing this? You’re hurting me!”

“Where is Morgan?”

“You mean Father?”

Sonja cranked another length of braid around her fist, pulling Anise onto her tiptoes. “He’s not my father, bitch! Answer me, damn you, or I’ll go in and take what I want to know! Who else is in this fuckin’ spook house?”

Anise’s eyes abruptly flickered to something beyond Sonja’s shoulder. The thought that there might be two of them entered Sonja’s head the same time the fireplace poker came down on her skull.

As the pain shot through her, she felt the Other throw itself against the bars of its cage like a tiger smelling blood. The Other wanted out, and it wanted out now. The Other wanted to twist the head off the bloat-bellied bitch and gouge the eyes out of whoever the asshole with the poker happened to be, then snatch the little unborn shit from its mother’s womb and snap its neck like a terrier worrying a rat.

“No. I’m not letting you out,” Sonja snarled between her gritted teeth. “Not yet. Save it for Morgan.” As she struggled to keep the Other under control, another blow fell across her shoulders, knocking her to the floor. This time she felt ribs crack and blood fill her mouth.

“Fell, stop it! I said stop!” Anise shouted as she grappled with her mate for control of the poker.

The male vampire was tall and thin, his features pale and finely chiseled, with hair the color of raw pine that hung past his shoulders in long, silken tresses. His ruby-red eyes were dilated, like those of a panther scenting its prey. Sonja knew that wild, cruel look all too well.

“I told you they hated us!” he growled, raising the poker for a final, killing blow. “They’re all crazy with jealousy because Father loves us more than them!”

“No, Fell!” Anise insisted, staying his hand. “She’s not a Renfield. Look at her. Look!”

Fell grudgingly lowered the poker and stared at the intruder with his piercing, bright-red eyes.

“She’s right, you know,” Sonja said, spitting out a mouthful of blood onto the carpet. “I’m not a Renfield.” Without further warning she sprang to her feet before the male vampire called Fell had a chance to react, snatching the weapon from his hand. Anise screamed as Sonja slammed the fire tool’s butt into his abdomen, knocking him to the floor, and then firmly planting her boot on his throat.

“If you try and make a move, I’ll ram the damn thing through his brain,” she warned, reversing her grip on the poker and holding it just above his eye socket.

“Go get Father!” Fell hissed, trying not to move. “Do what I say, Anise!”

Anise shook her head, tears trickling down her cheeks. “No, I’m not leaving you!”

“You can cry?” Sonja moved the poker away from Fell’s forehead, while keeping her boot firmly planted on his Adam’s apple. There was genuine awe and envy in her voice.

“Of course I can cry!” Anise sniffled as she wiped at her tears with the flat of her hand. “Everyone can cry.”

“No. Not everyone,” Sonja said wistfully. “Have you ever seen Morgan cry?”

Anise stared at her as if Sonja had started speaking in tongues. “What do you mean by that?”

“Vampires can’t shed tears. At least not ones not made of blood,” Sonja replied. “Nor can they become pregnant. I don’t know what Morgan has up his sleeve, but it looks like he’s really outdone himself.”

“It doesn’t matter. What matters is Morgan. I want to know where the bastard is holed up.”

“You mean our Father?” the couple replied in unison.

“Stop calling him that!” Sonja snarled, only to have them stare at her as if she’d told them not to call the sky blue or the grass green. She cursed in disgust and removed her foot from Fell’s throat, motioning for him to get up. Fell looked toward Anise, then back at his attacker, as if expecting a trick. “Get up, damn you!” Sonja barked, kicking him in the rump.

This time Fell did as he was told, hurrying to join Anise. He wrapped his arms protectively around his mate, glowering at Sonja with unalloyed hatred.

“Well, this is a fine family reunion, isn’t it?” Sonja said with a humorless laugh as she twisted the poker into a pretzel and tossed it aside. “I guess Big Daddy never told you two you had an older sister. Then again, I doubt he knows I even exist.”

“My wife needs to sit down. Is that okay with you?” Fell asked acidly.

“Of course; there’s no need to be uncivilized,” Sonja replied. As she watched Fell help his pregnant wife into her easy chair, she realized that their auras were nearly identical to her own, although significantly weaker. She had learned a long time ago how to guess the relative ages of various vampires by the auras they radiated. Anise and Fell were still quite young, by Noble standards, although the Anise’s aura was the more robust of the two. Sonja wondered if that had something to do with the mutant life form she carried inside her. Given their apparent youth and taking her own experience into consideration, she realized that the couple was still ‘mute’—incapable of the telepathic communication.

“I’ll give the bastard credit—he doesn’t plan small,” she muttered.

“Don’t use that word when you talk about our Father,” Fell snapped.

“Why don’t you shut up before I rip out your fuckin’ tongue?” she snarled in reply. “I’m trying to be nice here.”

“Nice? You call brutalizing my wife and attacking me nice?” he spat.

“So I’m a little lacking in the social graces,” Sonja shrugged.

“You seem to know a lot about our—Morgan, as you call him,” Anise said, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “I have never seen a creature such as you, outside of Fell. Not even our Father, the few times He has favored us with His presence, is like us. You say you are our sister. How can that be so? We are the only ones our Father has Made.”

“You talk about Morgan as if he’s some kind of god.”

“He is our Maker. He is our Father.” Anise smiled up at her husband, who squeezed her hand in return. “From His essence were we conceived, and in His image were we shaped. We came into being within moments of one another and have been conscious of no other life, no other love.”

Sonja eyed Anise speculatively. She remembered how, decades ago, she had emerged from a nine-month coma and to discover her long-term memory an utter blank. She remembered how desperate she had been for an identity—any identity—to fill the void inside her. Shortly after her resurrection she had fallen into the hands of a brutal pimp named Joe Lent, who had been more than eager to re-shape her in his image and proscribe the limits of her new world. She remembered how, at the time, she had held Lent in the same awe as Anise and Fell now viewed Morgan. And why not? Lent had given her life form and meaning when she was nothing but a blank slate. She had needed him the same way an empty pitcher needs water. But then he had to go and beat her one time too many…awakening the Other. After killing Lent and taking her first blood, the memories of whom and what she had been before Morgan raped her out of existence had come rushing back. Her life had been a living hell ever since.

The only way to make them understand what had been done to them was to kick-start their memories and freeing their former personalities. The biggest risk with doing so, however, was that if she wasn’t careful, she might trigger defensive shock. They could very well retreat into catatonia rather than deal with their buried memories. But there was no way around it—it had to be done.

Sonja knelt before Anise and stared into her face. Although Fell tensed, Anise did not flinch or draw away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But it’s time for childhood to end.”

She entered the pregnant woman’s mind as if parting a curtain. Anise convulsed if she’d just received a jolt of electricity, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her jaws snapped shut, causing an exposed fang to slice her lower lip.

“What did you do to her?” Fell demanded angrily.

Sonja was vaguely conscious of Fell’s hands on her person, but she was too busy to shrug him off. All she needed was to give a final little push...

My name is Lakisha Washington. I grew up in East Oakland; in a part of the city so violent and hopeless the police consider it a free-fire zone. My mother is a junkie who sells herself for drugs. My father is a nameless white man who had twenty dollars and a hard-on. My mother leaves me alone in my crib, squalling in fear of the rats, while she goes to meet her dealer. The neighbors break in and rescue me after six hours of screaming. I live with my grandmother after that. My mother fades from my life. She dies from an overdose on my seventh birthday. It is meaningless to me—like the death of a casual friend of the family. Despite the odds, I thrive in an environment as hostile to innocence as the surface of Venus. I do well in school, striving to prove myself, better myself. I want to escape this place so bad I can taste it. I manage to avoid the pitfalls that trap so many of my friends and fellow classmates: drugs, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism...

I want more from life than drudging for minimum wage at the corner Kentucky Fried Chicken stand. My determination to succeed inspires respect and contempt among those who have fallen in the trap. I get a reputation for being a “nice” girl, one that’s going places, but too smart and self-possessed to attract the opposite sex. I graduate valedictorian and land an out-of state scholarship. For the first time in my life I escape the bone-grinding, soul-numbing poverty I was born to, but to which I never succumbed. My grandmother dies in a charity hospital during my sophomore year. Despite my grief, I’m secretly relieved. It means I’ll never have to go back to Oakland ever again.

I work as hard in college as I did in high school, earning a Degree in Business Administration. To my delight, I’m recruited by a prestigious financial firm headquartered in San Francisco. I return to California, but this time I’m on the right side of the Bay.

I have a nice apartment in the Twin Peaks district, overlooking the city. From my balcony I can glimpse the place of my birth in the far distance, on those rare occasions I look in its direction. It looks deceptively serene, but never inviting. I am content. Everything I’ve set out to accomplish, to prove to myself and to others, has come true. I’m respected at work, I’m making more money than most Americans my age, White or Black, man or woman, and everything is looking up. No one knows I’m the bastard daughter of a whore who died with a syringe dangling from her arm, who was found stuffed between a couple of garbage cans like a broken doll for the trash collectors to find. There’s no reason for them to know.

Nor do they know about my dreams. The bad ones about the things in the dark with the red glowing eyes and the razor-sharp teeth that watch me as I lie helpless in my crib. The dreams get so bad they intrude on my work. So I do what any other self- respecting young urban professional would do: I get myself a shrink.

Dr. Caron comes very highly recommended. His clients number among San Francisco’s political and financial elite. He is handsome, sympathetic, understanding; the kind of psychiatrist a young woman can open her soul to without fear. Dr. Caron tells me there is nothing wrong with turning my back on the squalor and unhappiness of my past, that I need not feel guilty because I am now a part of the system that exploits my old friends and family in my former neighborhood. I owe nothing to anyone, except myself. Soon the dreams go away. But my dependence on Dr. Caron grows. My will seems to dissolve when I’m in his presence. But this does not frighten or worry me. Instead, I feel at peace.

Dr. Caron invites me to a weekend retreat hosted at his place in the Valley. I am one of ten patients—five women and five men— who find ourselves in Caron’s strange, rambling mansion. All of us are single and live alone. All of us are either orphaned or estranged from your parents. All of us are people no one will truly miss. But I don’t realize that until the experiments begin.

Dr. Caron introduces us to a form of drug therapy that was created by he and a quiet, moon-faced man known as Dr. Howell. Each participant is given various dosages, injected directly to the blood stream. Dr. Caron says something about finding a “worthy vessel”. Then all hell breaks loose.

Three of the subjects die of convulsions within minutes of taking the drug. Two others suffer massive coronaries, while another goes into liver failure. One blinds himself by plunging is thumbs into his eyes. Another patient, screaming like a wounded animal, leaps onto the back of the blinded subject and tears at him with her bare teeth. But I do none of these things. I simply go to sleep. A long, long sleep filled with dreams of half-glimpsed hypodermic syringes and intravenous drips.

And I awake; I am no longer Lakisha Washington. I am Anise, because my Father tells me that is my name. Which is has it should be. And my Father, knowing I am lonely and need companionship, gives me a mate: Fell. He is beautiful and I love him, as your Father commands. Which is as it should be.

“Damn you, I said get your hands off her!”

Fell’s fist smashed into Sonja’s face, knocking her away from Anise and sending her glasses flying across the room. She lay there, dazed, on the floor, blood seeping from her broken nose, as Anise’s persona and memories receded and her own identity returned.

“What did you do to her?” Fell thundered angrily, pointing to Anise, who was trembling like a malaria victim. She stared at her hands as if she’d never seen them before, refusing to look at Fell.

Fell delivered a vicious kick to Sonja’s side. She took the blow without complaint. She deserved the pain.

“Answer me! What did you do?” As he cocked his leg back for another kick, Anise abruptly got to her feet.

“Leave her alone, Fell! She doesn’t mean us any harm!”

“She has a funny way of showing it!”

Anise walked over to where the mirrored sunglasses lay on the floor. She picked them up and handed them to Sonja, who sat huddled on the floor, her upper lip smeared with blood. As Sonja raised her head, Anise flinched at the sight of her blood-filled eyes and over-large pupils.

“Get used to it, kid,” Sonja hissed, snatching the glasses from her hand. “The eyes are the first thing to mutate once you start drinking blood on a regular basis.”

“I don’t know if I should thank you for what you did,” Anise said, her hands resting atop the swell of her stomach. “But I remember now.”

“Self-knowledge is the hardest part,” Sonja grunted. “I know what you must be feeling... thinking…”

Anise nodded slowly. “It wasn’t all one way. I saw your memories just as you saw mine.”

“What are you two talking about?” Fell frowned.

Anise leaned forward, ignoring his question. “What does he want from us?” she whispered.

Sonja pointed at Anise’s swollen midsection. “That’s more than just a baby you’re carrying around. It’s his ticket to godhood.”

Anise frowned. “I don’t understand-”

“Whenever vampires attack humans, they infect them with a supernatural virus that generates drastic mutations in the human’s biochemistry, replacing half of the host’s chromosomes with the vampire’s. It’s not unlike human conception, except that the fetus is an adult corpse. Because of this here is a certain biological fealty, insuring obedience to the Maker is in the blood.”

Anise’s face crumpled. “Then it’s hopeless to try and fight him.”

“No, it isn’t!” Sonja replied. “How do you think Morgan came into being? He was Made, just like I described. But he had the force of will to assert his personality over that of his Maker’s. Morgan can only dominate you if you give up and refuse to fight him. You can do it, Anise. I know you have the strength. For the sake of your child, you’ve got to fight him.”

Sonja was not a hundred percent certain what she’d just said was true, but she was unwilling to accept biochemical predestination, whether natural or supernatural.

“It all keeps coming back to the baby. Why?”

“Vampires like Morgan are incapable of conceiving and giving birth. It takes centuries for a vampire to become powerful as he is. Why? Because a Noble is only as powerful as his brood. Since they are born of dead meat, they are often less than perfect, when it comes to their brain power. Think what it would mean to Morgan to have a living vampire, one capable of perfectly replicating itself, without having to worry about quality control. Within a blink of an eye, as vampires judge time, he’ll have an entire army immune to silver and capable of movement during the day! And not a single one of them will possess any bothersome memories of having once been human. No wonder the Renfields hate you: you’re threatening to make them obsolete! Morgan’s out to make himself a god-emperor, Anise. And you’re providing him with his first high priest.”

“Anise, that’s bullshit and you know it! Our Father would never do anything like that!”

“Shut up, Fell! Just shut up!” Anise hissed, baring her fangs. Rebuffed, Fell stepped back and looked away. “What do you want me to do?”she asked.

“Come with me.” Sonja was surprised to hear herself saying the words.

“You want me to leave?”

“Not leave: escape!”

“Where could we go?”

“Where couldn’t we go? There’s a whole world out there, Anise!” Sonja replied with a laugh. “It won’t be hard to find somewhere safe for you to have the baby. If not here, then in Central or South America.”

“But Morgan...”

“Let me worry about Morgan, okay? So, what’s the verdict? Are you with me?”

With a grunt Anise hoisted herself out of the chair. “I’m with you.”

“Darling, what’s gotten into you?” Fell asked in amazement. “You’ve never acted like this way before! What did that crazy woman do to you?”

“She woke me up, Fell!” Anise replied solemnly. “I’m not sleepwalking anymore. I’m finally doing something that’s my idea, not Father’s!”

“You can’t do this!” Fell shouted, grabbing her roughly by the arm. “I forbid it!”

Anise jerked her arm free of her husband’s grasp. “Back off, motherfucker!” she snarled with a snap of her teeth.

The look on Fell’s face was that of a pole-axed young animal, left alive but forever altered. For a moment it seemed as if he would stagger and fall.

“Come on, if we’re going to leave, we better do it now,” Sonja said, motioning to the secret doorway she’d used earlier.

“No, there’s another way out,” Anise said, with a shake of her head. “I’m not supposed to know it exists, but I overheard one of the Renfields talking about it. It leads directly to the outside.”

“Good. If we leave now, we’ll have at least an hour or two of sunlight in our favor.” Sonja shot a sharp look at Fell. “How about you, golden boy? Are you coming with us?”

Fell opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head.

“I should kill you, you know,” she said sternly.

Fell lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, refusing to show fear. “So why don’t you?”

Sonja didn’t answer him. She was still puzzling his question when Anise led her out of the parlor and into the hallway.

The nucleus of Ghost Trap, when compared to its protective outer layers, was merely yet another large, Victorian mansion filled with antiques. With its antimacassars and overstuffed furniture it looked more like it should belong to someone’s dotty great aunt rather than a vampire lord.

Anise motioned to a small, narrow door set into the side of a staircase. “This leads to an underground tunnel that connects to what used be the stables. It’s how Morgan and the Renfields get come in and out.”

“What are you doing out of your room?”

Anise gasped as she looked up to see a stern-faced woman with the characteristic wan complexion and pinched face of a Renfield glowering down at her over the staircase banister.

“I was bored,” she explained, as Sonja disappeared into the shadows. “I wanted to take a walk.”

“You know you’re not allowed to roam the house unsupervised!” the Renfield scolded as she hurried down the stairs. “Did Dr. Howell tell you to do this?” There was an edge in her voice suggesting she would like nothing better than to accuse the good doctor of something more serious than malpractice.

“No one told me to do anything! It was my decision to go for a walk.”

The Renfield frowned as if Anise had suddenly started speaking in Swahili. “No one decides things for themselves in Ghost Trap. Besides, I heard talking to someone. Who was it?”

“I was talking to the baby, that’s all,” Anise explained, patting her belly.

The Renfield’s lips peeled back, like those of a rabid dog, displaying a set of yellowed teeth. “You’re a lying little shit.”

Anise slapped the woman so hard it knocked the Renfield to the floor. The human servant got back to her feet, blood drooling from her mouth.

“I don’t care if you are his prize broodmare,” the Renfield snarled, her eyes burning with hate. “I’m going to burn your brain for that!”

“I don’t think so,” Sonja said as she stepped out of the shadows. She grabbed the Renfield by the neck and twisted her wrist. The psychic dropped to the floor like a sack of cement.

“You killed her!” Anise gasped.

“I couldn’t risk her raising the alarm,” Sonja grunted, considerably less distraught by the situation. “C’mon. We’re wasting time!” she said as she threw the corpse over her shoulder and opened the door leading to the tunnel.

“You’re taking her with us?” Anise grimaced.

“We can’t leave Little Miss Sunshine here lying around for the housekeeper to stumble over,” Sonja pointed out. “I’ve got to stash the stiff somewhere, don’t I?”

Anise followed Sonja into the space under the stairs, where they wedged the Renfield’s corpse in a corner then descended a short, wooden stairway leading to a dark, brick-lined tunnel. The place smelled of damp earth, spiders and rat piss. At the far end of the tunnel was a series of iron rungs leading to an overhead trapdoor. Sunlight filtered around the cracks, illuminating fungus spores dancing lazily in the air.

“Okay, up you go, young mother,” Sonja said, gesturing to the ladder.

Anise placed a hand on the bottom rung, looked up at the dim sunlight, then back at Sonja. “What about Fell?”

“He had his chance,” she replied evenly.

“But he doesn’t understand! He’s still asleep, like I was. Maybe if I tried talking to him, maybe then he’d listen and let you wake him you, like you did me.”

“Anise...”

“I didn’t ask for this!” Her voice was both angry and frightened, like a child trying to control her sense of betrayal. “All I wanted was to get rid of my nightmares! Now I wake up from a dream and find myself still in the nightmare. Everything is upside down and crazy. Suddenly I’m pregnant and married and I don’t know how it happened or why. For the love of God, I’m a lesbian! But still, Fell’s the father of my child. I can’t just leave him behind, can I?”

“Anise, if you go back in there, you may never get out again. And even if you do, how are you going to escape the valley? You’re not going to get very far on foot in your condition.”

“I may have put East Oakland behind me,” Anise replied. “But I still remember how to boost a car.”

“Very well. Go back and get him, if you can. There’s a little town nearby called El Pájaro. We’ll rendezvous at the motel—it’s the only one, so you can’t miss it. Look for a rented Ford Escort.”

Anise nodded her understanding. As she turned to go head back down the tunnel, Sonja grabbed her arm one last time. “I warn you—if you fall back under Morgan’s control, I’ll have to kill you. Is that clear?”

“It’s been a hundred and fifty years since the Emancipation Proclamation,” Anise said gravely. “I have no intention to bring a child of mine into the world as a slave.” She paused, and then flung her arms around Sonja, dragging her into a hasty embrace.

Sonja returned the hug. “God’s speed, sister,” she whispered. She then watched Anise disappear into the darkness, and then climbed into the sunlight, her eyes frustratingly dry.

Anise

No woman can call herself free who does not own or control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

—Margaret Sanger

Chapter Fourteen

Palmer was well into his second pack of cigarettes by the time Sonja re-emerged from the undergrowth. He got up from where he’d been squatting in the shade, the binoculars’ eyepieces capped. He had stopped studying Ghost Trap shortly after Sonja entered the building. He didn’t like the reverberations the house kicked up in his hindbrain. He grinned a welcome to his partner, actually surprised to find himself glad to see her.

“It’s about time you got back! I was starting to get worried. There’s only an hour or two before it gets dark. So, did you off the bastard?”

“Get in the car.”

“You did kill him, didn’t you?” he asked nervously. “I mean, we’re not going to have to worry about some heavyweight bogeyman coming down on our asses after the sun goes down, are we?”

“We’ll talk about it later, Palmer.”

“You didn’t do it,” he said flatly, his smile abruptly dissolving.

“I said we’ll talk about it later!”

Palmer ground out his smoldering cigarette with a sharp twist of his heel. “I should have known,” he muttered as he crawled behind the wheel. “I should have fuckin’ known.”

The Parakeet Motel provided the only lodging in El Pájaro, a tiny hamlet of three thousand souls located in the Sonoma foothills. Palmer scowled at the sign fronting the parking lot, which depicted a budgie, its once-bright colors now badly faded, locked within a birdcage fashioned from neon tubing. He looked up as Sonja returned from the registration desk, sliding into the passenger seat next to him. She held up a piece of pink plastic with a key dangling from its end.

“I told him we were a honeymooning couple and didn’t want to be bothered, so he stuck at the far end, away from the other guests.”

“So I see,” Palmer commented dryly, scanning the empty gravel parking lot. He put the car into gear.

The L-shaped motor court was made of pick the color of well-chewed bubble gum and the interior of the room was no better, with pale bisque walls and a carpet looked, and felt, like dropped cotton candy.

“I feel like I’ve been swallowed by a huge snake,” Palmer groaned as he eyed the worn pink chenille spread covering the queen-size mattress.

Sonja stared for a long moment at the picture hanging over the bed of a praying child with huge, waifish eyes and a tiny mouth set into a simpering pout before yanking it off the wall and sailing it into a corner. She flopped heavily onto the bed, boots and all, the box springs squealing in protest.

Palmer was surprised at how tired she looked. Since their lives had become entangled, he had never experienced Sonja as anything less than preternaturally intense. The sight of her sprawled across the bed sparked both a sense of uneasiness and a vague lust in him.

“I feel so old sometimes,” she said wearily as she slowly rubbed her forehead. “So horribly, horribly old. And I’m not even a hundred yet. I wonder how the truly ancient ones feel, like Pangloss? They must be so very tired. I’ve heard that when they grow weary of continuing, they simply go into a hibernation that can lasts for years, even decades. Sleep: the stepchild of Death.” Her voice had a smoky, far-away feel to it. Palmer wondered if she was aware she was speaking aloud.

He sat next to her on the bed and stared at the worn carpet between his shoes. “Are you going to tell me what happened inside Ghost Trap?”

“I discovered I’m not alone,” she replied.

He turned to stare at her in surprise. “What?”

In a soft, weary voice she told him about Anise and Fell and Morgan’s plan to breed his own race of designer-gene vampires.

“And you left them there?” he asked in disbelief. “Alive?”

“You don’t understand, Palmer...”

“You’re damn right I don’t understand! Why didn’t you kill them?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t, you mean!”

“No. Couldn’t.”

Sonja removed her sunglasses, exposing her eyes to him for the first time. There were no whites or cornea, merely blood red dominated by huge pupils that were dilated to maximize even the feeblest light source. They were the eyes of a hybrid, neither human nor vampire. At first he was repulsed by how raw and inhuman they’d looked, but now he could see a perverse beauty in them.

“I used to think I could reclaim what I once was by killing what I’d become. It hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time for me to finally start building instead of destroying. I’ve been lonely, Palmer; so terribly lonely.”

He kissed her without really knowing why, but at the same time was confident the action was his and his alone. She responded quickly, wrapping her arms about him. His hands slipped under her shirt, his fingers tracing the scars left by old wounds. She arched her back and moaned in pleasure, her muscles rippling like those of a great cat. As she stripped away her shirt, he saw that her torso was pale as white opal and covered in scars. As he ran his hands over her body, instead of being repulsed, he found himself fascinated by the complex designs they formed. It was like reading Braille; each scar a story bonded forever to her flesh. She helped him out of his clothes, her fingers tracing, in turn, the scar over his heart. Palmer felt a tremor of apprehension in the back of his mind, as memories of Lola briefly surfaced, then disappeared.

She closed around him like a velvet fist, her arms and legs wrapped about his own, holding him fast. Although he knew there was no way he could break free of her embrace, he felt no urge to escape it. Her mind reached out and touched his, teasing it from its cage of bone. She laughed, a telepathic bird song echoing inside his head, as she urged him to surrender both body and mind to his passion.

As he shucked his skin, the jungle surged behind his eyelids. He saw a beautiful woman with intricate ritual designs scratched into her cheeks and brow smiling at him. The smell of burning copal filled his nostrils. Then he was free of his flesh, their minds twining together like mating snakes. He could not see her, but he knew Sonja was there, both within and outside him. It was a delicious feeling, one that transcended the human physical vocabulary. It went beyond any sensations he’d ever derived from sex or drugs or any form of carnal gratification. He experienced the raw essence of orgasm, cut free of biological imperative, the promised reward of the faithful: the thousand-year climax.

Suddenly he was back in his body, to find himself rutting like a bull in heat. Sonja convulsed under him, thrusting her pelvis against his with bruising urgency. His shoulders stung and something warm trickled over his bare skin. The sight and smell of his blood dripping from her fingernails stoked his lust even higher. She arched her back, her muscles as taut as bowstrings, and hissed like a cat, her lips pulled back in a rictus grin as she bared her fangs. Palmer groaned as her contractions milked him dry.

He lay atop her, sweat and blood drying on his back, and smoothed the hair away from her face. There were no words. None were needed. He studied the tilt of her cheekbones and the shape of her nose in the failing daylight that filtered through the drawn curtains. As he drifted into sleep, it occurred to him that this was the first time in decades he hadn’t needed a smoke after sex.

The next thing he knew the room was in deep shadow and someone was knocking at the door. Sonja moved with the speed and agility of an animal, untangling herself from their lover’s embrace. She moved so fast he didn’t even see her slip her glasses back on.

Palmer quickly yanked on his pants and moved to answer the door, minus his shirt and shoes. He saw Sonja out of the corner of his eye, moving along the baseboard like a tiger preparing to pounce. The sight of her muscles coiling and uncoiling underneath her moon-pale skin sparked a brief rush of lust in his loins.

He opened the door the width of the safety chain and peered out at the small-boned African-American woman who stood shivering in the chill mountain air.

“Whattayawant?” he grunted.

The woman tossed back her cornrowed braids, revealing eyes that gleamed like polished rubies. “I need to see Sonja.”

“It’s okay. Let her in.”

Palmer opened the door and Anise hurried inside the room. She wore a loose cotton dress with dark, tulip-shaped stains on its front.

“Where’s Fell?” Sonja asked, motioning for Palmer to keep watch at the window as she finished getting dressed.

“It went bad,” Anise replied, her voice trembling on the edge of tears. “Worse than I thought it ever would. I’m lucky I got away.”

“What happened?”

“I went back and tried to talk to him, like I said I would. But it was impossible! It was like his ears were sealed with wax. I told him that I didn’t love him—that I wasn’t going to be Morgan’s brood bitch anymore. He tried to keep me from leaving. I ended up hitting him with one of the fire tools. There was a lot of blood. I tied him up and stuffed him in one of the closets. While I was busy doing that, I was surprised by another Renfield. I had no choice,” she said, grimacing in distaste. “I killed him with my bare hands.”

“How did it feel?” Sonja asked.

Anise stopped her pacing and scowled. Easy. Too easy.”

“And…?” Sonja prodded.

“It felt good,” she admitted with a shudder. “Sweet Jesus, what am I turning into? What did that bastard do to me?”

Sonja did not answer because there was nothing she could say that would make the situation better. It had been so long since she had last believed herself human, but she could remember the horror that had accompanied the realization that she was forever beyond mortal ken. She imagined how it must have been for Anise to come to her senses and find herself not only married to a man she didn’t love and pregnant against her will, but no longer human. She was humbled by her sister’s underlying strength that her mind had not crumbled under the weight of it all. Still, she could not help but wonder how long it would be before Anise’s own version of the Other made itself known.

“Think you’re up to a three-hour drive to San Francisco?” she asked.

“We sure as hell can’t stay here,” Anise grunted. “Father probably has his prize Renfield out looking for me. I’m ready to go whenever you are—uh-oh.” Anise suddenly grimaced in pain. “I think I spoke too soon.”

Palmer looked like he’d just swallowed a lemon. “Does she mean what I think she means?”

As if in answer, Anise’s water broke onto the dirty pink shag carpet.

“I’m afraid so,” Sonja sighed.

Chapter Fifteen

The first contraction doubled Palmer over. He was coming from the bathroom when it hit, crashing against him like a wave. The phantom pain radiating from his pelvis caused him to stagger and nearly drop the armload of towels he was carrying.

“Screen yourself! She’s broadcasting!” Sonja barked.

“Now you tell me,” Palmer groaned as he struggled to erect a mental barrier between him and the laboring vampire.

Anise gave a strangled cry and dug her fingers deep into the mattress, shredding the bedclothes like rotten silk. Palmer felt the pain press against his shield like a heavy, insistent hand, but, remarkably, the barricade held.

“This is not good. Not good at all,” Sonja said as she brushed a stray lock of hair from her face, leaving a smear of Anise’s blood on her brow. “She’s broadcasting like a damn satellite! Of all the times for her psychic powers to kick in! The Renfields will be zeroing in on our location soon, if they aren’t already.”

“Is there any way we could get her in the car and back to San Francisco?” Palmer asked. “At least we stand a chance there. If nothing else, we could get Pangloss to help us.”

Sonja shook her head. “She’s already crowning. Besides, Pangloss would kill her and the baby.”

Palmer glanced over at Anise, who lay on her back, gripping the bedstead with bloodless hands. A lamp situated on the dresser, its light muted by a towel thrown over the shade, provided the room’s only illumination. The way she lay there sweating and grunting, with her dress pushed up and her knees open, was so primeval that all that was missing was a shaman shaking a rattle to complete the scene.

“How long before the baby comes?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard enough to tell with a normal pregnancy, much less something like this. But it’s going to be soon.”

“Great,” he grunted, rolling his eyes.

“Better put your gun back on,” Sonja said, nodding to holstered .38 hanging from the back of a chair. “We may need it to get out of here, if Morgan’s hounds show up soon.”

“Sonja?” Anise called out. “Where are you?”

“I’m here, sis. I’m not going anywhere,” Sonja replied as she returned to Anise’s bedside, mopping the sweat from her face with a damp washcloth. “How you doing, kid?”

“It hurts, Sonja,” she said from between gritted teeth. “A lot.”

“So the Bible tells me,” Sonja sighed. “That’s only natural, Anise.”

“No, that’s not it—not all of it, anyway. There’s something else going on.” She grimaced as another spasm racked her body. “It’s like passing a broken bottle. I—” She gave a brief cry and slammed her head against the pillows, squeezing her eyes shut. “Sweet Mother of Christ, what did I ever do to be punished like this? What?”

“Sonja! The baby’s coming!” Palmer cried, doubling over in phantom pain, no longer able to screen himself from Anise’s agony.

Sonja positioned herself at the foot of the bed in time to see the baby’s head emerge from between Anise’s thighs. She moved to help the infant free itself from the birth canal, only to recoil in horror. Its head was bulbous, with eyes as black and flat as those of an insect. It had a flat, upturned nose like that of a bat, and a tube-like mouth made of gristle and lined with tiny lamprey-like teeth. As Sonja stared in disbelief, the infant creature whipped its tiny yet powerful shoulders back and forth until it finally freed one arm, revealing five tiny fingers capped by curving talons. With a weird, gurgling cry, it hooked its claws into the gore-stained bedclothes in order to drag itself the rest of the way out. Once free of its mother, the newborn vampire lay there like a maggot, glistening with birth fluids.

Palmer muttered a curse under his breath as he stared at the thing on the bed. As Sonja moved to cut its umbilical cord with her switchblade, the creature lifted its oversized head on a surprisingly steady neck, regarding her warily with its flat black eyes.

“Easy... easy, now...” she whispered, as if addressing a skittish, potentially dangerous animal.

“Sonja? What’s wrong with the baby?” Anise’s voice both anxious and weak. “Why isn’t it crying, Sonja?”

Sonja quickly severed the umbilical cord, quickly tying off the end. As she wrapped it in a clean towel, she could not help but notice that the infant was completely smooth between the legs, lacking even an anus.

“Why don’t you answer me?” Anise asked as she struggled into a sitting position. “What’s wrong? Is it dead?”

“No, it’s not dead,” Sonja replied, placing herself between mother and child. “But I’m not sure if it’s a baby or not.”

“What do you mean you’re not sure?”Anise said angrily. “Woman, let me see my child!”

Sonja sighed and turned around to pick the thing and hand it over to its mother—only to find it had disappeared.

“Shit, Palmer!” she yelped. “I thought you were keeping an eye on it!”

“Why should I?” he replied nervously. “Hell, the thing just got born!”

“Where’d the damn thing go?” Sonja muttered, stepping away from the bed as she scanned the shadows along the baseboards.

Suddenly Palmer caught a blur of motion at the corner of his eye. He contemplated taking his gun out of its holster, but quickly discarded the idea.

It’s just a baby, for Chrissakes! He told himself. A really seriously ugly, mutant vampire baby.

Just then something small darted out from under the bureau and latched onto his right calf. He screeched as a ring of lamprey-like teeth began chewing its way to the meat inside his pants leg. Swearing and hopping on one foot, Palmer tried his best to shake the baby loose without losing his balance. On his second kick, he succeeded in sending the creature sailing halfway across the room, where it landed on its back and squealed like a suckling pig pulled from its mother’s nipple. The baby vampire flailed at the air with its chubby arms and legs like a tipped turtle desperate to right itself

“That’s quite enough of that!” Sonja said sternly, snatching the shrieking infant off the floor. She frowned at Palmer’s leg. “You better see to that before infection sets in.”

Palmer risked a glance at his calf and saw that his pants leg was now shredded and that blood was oozing from dozens of tiny punctures in his skin, but was otherwise unharmed.

“What about that—that—thing?” he retorted, jabbing a finger at the struggling mutant Sonja held like a live rattlesnake, her fingers clamped behind the holes where its ears should have been

“That’s Anise’s decision,” she reminded him. She then turned and presented the squirming monster to its mother. “I can take care of it, if it’s what you want.” Her voice was flat and without emotion, as if offering to take out the garbage.

“No,” Anise said sadly as she stretched out her arms to accept the wriggling infant. “It’s my child. It’s my responsibility.”

The mutant stopped its angry thrashing the moment Anise touched it, regarding her with unreadable, bottomless eyes. The gristle that formed its mouth puckered and unpuckered rapidly. It wanted to nurse.

“It’s not its fault,” she said softly. “This was how it was born. It can’t be anything else.” She gave a hollow laugh. “You know, I actually was considering having a child before all this happened. Not anytime soon—maybe in a year or two, after I found a nice girl to settle down with. Maybe make a trip to the friendly neighborhood artificial inseminator.” Her lips twisted themselves into a bitter parody of a smile. “I never thought I’d end up with... with...” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “Like I said—it’s my responsibility.” She snapped the baby’s neck like a green twig. It didn’t even have time to cry or scratch her with its claws. She stared at the motionless body cradled in her arm and ran a trembling hand over its bulging brow. “Poor thing. It didn’t ask for any of this—ahhh!” Anise abruptly grimaced as a new wave of pain washed over her. The mutant’s corpse slipped from her arms and landed on the floor with a dull thud.

“The contractions. They’ve started again! I—Oh Lord, not again!” Anise grabbed Sonja’s shoulder as she pushed down, her fingernails digging in deep. “Ah! Oh, Jesus! Make it stop!” She drew a shaky breath through her teeth. “Whatever the first one did trying to get out—it screwed me up bad, Sonja! I don’t know if I can—” The next contraction turned her words into an incoherent scream.

“Don’t worry, Anise,” Sonja said as she pried herself free of Anise’s grip. “Everything will be all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, understand?”

Anise’s second child came into the world wrapped in a caul, looking more like a caterpillar in a cocoon than a human child. As Sonja split the thick membrane shrouding the infant, she was relieved to see what looked to be a normal face. She gave its tiny flanks a brief pinch and was rewarded with a healthy, indignant wail from fully-formed lungs. She swiftly severed the umbilical cord and wrapped the newborn in a clean towel, then held it out to its mother.

Anise turned her head away, pressing her face into the pillow. “I don’t want to see it.”

“It’s all right,” Sonja smiled. “You can look.”

As Anise cautiously lifted her head, Sonja was alarmed by how drawn and pale she looked. Anise peered cautiously at the child wrapped inside the impromptu swaddling. It was still as red as a piece of raw meat, squalled like a Siamese cat in heat and had the face of a miniature prizefighter.

“She’s beautiful!” Anise exclaimed in relief.

“Yes, she is, isn’t she?” Sonja whispered, placing the tiny bundle in her mother’s arms.

While Anise was preoccupied with her baby, Sonja quietly scooped its dead twin off the floor and wrapped it in a discarded, blood-caked towel. They would have to take the thing with them and dispose of it later on. It wouldn’t do to leave something like that for the housekeeping staff to find after they checked out.

Sonja stared absently at the gore smearing her hands, fighting the urge to lick her fingers. She knew she was pushing her own tolerance dangerously close to the edge. She needed to feed, and her surroundings weren’t helping much. The room reeked of blood.

Palmer limped out of the bathroom. He’d ripped open his right pants leg from the knee down and wrapped his calf with strips torn from his undershirt.

“How’s the leg?” she asked

“It’s been better.”

Sonja found herself staring at the crimson seeping through the makeshift bandage and wondering what his blood might taste like. She grimaced in disgust and quickly looked away.

“How do you like Lethe?” Anise asked.

“Lee-Thee what?” Sonja frowned, distracted by the Other’s laughter in her head.

“As a name,” Anise explained. “It’s from Baudelaire. A name is the least I can give her before I die.”

“Anise, listen to me. I know you’re hurt, but you’re not going to die. You can regenerate, but you’re going to need blood. If you don’t feed soon, your body will start cannibalizing itself. Do you know what that means?”

“You’re saying I have to kill someone if I want to stay alive. I can’t do that, Sonja! I don’t care what that bastard did to me—I refuse to be a monster.”

“You won’t have to do it,” Sonja offered. “I’ll hunt for you. There are plenty of transients, people no one will ever miss. Drunks, hitchhikers, bums...”

“My God, Sonja!” Anise gasped. “You sound just like him!”

“I’m not going to let you die!” Sonja was surprised to hear herself shouting. “I won’t let you!”

The baby started at the noise and began to cry again. Anise did not look at Sonja as she spoke, but instead addressed her words to the newborn at her side, smoothing the few wispy strands of hair on her daughter’s brow. “I can’t do it. I can’t take that step beyond. I don’t have your courage. I had enough strength to break free of Morgan, but not enough to deal with continuing my life by killing others.”

“I felt the same way, myself, years ago,” Sonja argued. “But once you get used to it, you’ll see things differently.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of! Please, Sonja. Don’t try to talk me out of this. I know what I’m doing.”

“But what about Lethe? What about your daughter?”

Anise smiled and kissed her child on the forehead. “I hope she can forgive me for not being there while she grows up. But she needs more than a mother right now. She needs a champion. I promised no child of mine would be born a slave. I’m trusting you to protect her, Sonja.”

“I’m the last person on earth you should put your faith in. I’m a murderer a hundred times over. Every day I fight to keep the demon inside me from taking over, and a lot of times I lose. You might as well hire Typhoid Mary as a baby sitter!”

“You judge yourself too harshly, sister,” Anise smiled, the light in her ruby eyes already starting to fade. “Here, take Lethe. Morgan will be here soon. I can feel him calling to me.”

Sonja cocked her head to one side. She could hear a faint tone, like the reverberation of a plucked chord, only instead of growing fainter it was becoming louder. She could take him. She was sure of it. But she was equally certain Morgan was not alone. There was also Palmer to take into consideration. He might be able to handle himself in a firefight, but she had her doubts when it came to a full-frontal psychic assault. And if they succumbed to Morgan’s forces, where would that leave Anise’s baby?

Sonja bent and kissed her sister on the cheek. “Good-bye, Anise,” she whispered.

“My name is Lakisha,” she replied hoarsely. “Anise was just a dream. And not even my own.” She hesitated for a moment, staring at her daughter as if she was committing every detail of her face to memory before thrusting the infant into Sonja’s arms. “Take her before I change my mind!”

“Is there anything you want before we go?”

She nodded her head. “Leave me the gun.”

Palmer and Sonja exchanged looks, and then he sighed and removed the .38 from its holster and handed it to Anise, who smiled weakly. It wasn’t much of a tradeoff, her child for the gun, but it would have to do.

Chapter Sixteen

“There’s the car, milord. She must be inside the motel room,” said the chauffeur.

“A brilliant deduction, as usual, Renfield,” Morgan sighed from the back seat of the Rolls. He peered over the top of his tinted aviator glasses at the Ferrari parked outside Room 20 of the Parakeet Motel. The automobile was his, although the paperwork and owner’s registration in the glove compartment was in the name of one Dr. Henry Caron. But as Lord Morgan and the good doctor were one and the same, whatever belonged to Henry Caron belonged to him, as well. Including his patients.

Morgan glanced at the Renfield seated beside him. He was the descendant of a long line of ninja assassins deliberately interbred to cultivate powerful psychic abilities, and possessed a reputation for sanity and stability that was considered rare amongst sensitives. Morgan acknowledged his servant’s unique status by addressing him by his given name.

“Nasakenai: Scan.”

The sensitive nodded silently, tilting his head to one side, like a robin listening for worms. “She’s there. Alone.”

Morgan scowled. “Are you sure? I don’t like to be caught unawares. Something this Sonja creature seems quite adept at.”

“She is alone,” Nasakenai assured him. “And in great pain.”

Morgan weighed the information carefully. It was possible Anise’s would-be savior had abandoned her after all, although he was curious as to why she would leave the breeder alive. Then again, all he knew of his newest enemy was what Fell had learned from Anise before she hit him with the ash shovel from the fireplace. The speed with which Anise had turned against him bothered Morgan a great deal. He’d picked her as a potential breeder because of her deep-seated psychological need to be assimilated by the dominant class structure. His programming should have held fast. That a rogue operative could penetrate Ghost Trap’s defenses and undo so much hard work in so short a period of time was troubling. That the intruder enemy had claimed to be one of his own broodlings disturbed even more alarming.

He had heard rumors circulating amongst the Nobility of something called the Blue Woman stalking the Ruling Class and their minions, but had always dismissed them as the fantasy of decaying minds made paranoid by centuries of intrigue and counterplots. According to the brood-masters who claimed to have had dealings with the maverick, the Blue Woman was neither human nor vampire, but a mixture of both, and possessed immense strength, the ability to walk in daylight and an immunity to silver. Morgan had been amused by the need these pathetic, senile ancients, Pangloss amongst them, seemed to have to create a bogeyman to fear.

It was from these stories, however, that the idea to create a race of hybrid vampires first arose. With his custom-designed Homo Desmodus under his control, he would soon have the likes of Baron Luxor, the Contessa and Dr. Pangloss kowtowing before him, pledging fealty for all eternity—or however long he saw fit for to allow them to continue. But now his dreams of glory were collapsing, undermined by a creature of his own creation. Morgan savored irony, but not at his own expense.

“Signal the others,” he said, straightening the cuffs of his Savile Row suit.

Nasakenai nodded, silently relaying his master’s commands to the occupants of the second car. The doors of the accompanying Mercedes popped open and two figures climbed out.

One was a Renfield, the other had once been a particularly obnoxious Scientologist who had accused Dr. Caron of being an antisocial enemy of the people. Which he was, of course, but not because he was a psychiatrist. Now his body was home to a fire elemental. The Renfield gave the pyrotic a wide berth to avoid the intense heat it radiated.

Morgan climbed out of the Rolls, followed closely by Nasakenai. The gravel crunched under his designer Italian shoes as he crossed the parking lot. The door to the motel room was unlocked.

Anise lay curled atop sheets befouled with the fluids of childbirth. Her pallor was grayish and her eyes deeply sunken in their orbits. She clutched a bloodstained bundle to her breast. She cringed at the sight of her Maker standing in the doorway, flanked by his most trusted and powerful minions.

“You disappoint me, child,” he said by way of greeting.

“I’m not your child!” She tried to make her voice hard, but the words came out sounding more petulant than angry. She closed her eyes, trying to subvert the conditioned submissive response his physical presence triggered in her. But simply shutting off the visual cue wasn’t enough. He was all over her—in her mind, her senses, her breath. He was everywhere and everything, unavoidable and undeniable.

Morgan’s lips pulled into a cruel smile. “If I am not your Father, who is? God? Satan? Some honky from Watsonville out for cheap pussy? I chose you, Anise, to be the mother of a new race, because I something in you. I raised you up from nothing and Made you in my image, so that you could be the Blood Madonna. Only to have you show your gratitude by killing my servants and running away. Is this how a daughter repays her father for all the things he’s done for her?”

“Done to her, you mean!” Anise retorted. While her lower lip trembled, the hate in her eyes remained undimmed.

“Come now!” he chided. “This isn’t how I want things to be between us! You’re mixed up and confused. I understand that. You’re still young in the ways of the Real World, and easily impressed by those around you. Like your new friend—Sonja, is it? She abandoned you, didn’t she? She left you alone and helpless, rather than face me. She filled your head with a lot of talk about freedom and free will. Those are very nice, pretty-sounding words, aren’t they? But they’re just words, Anise; simple-minded phrases that deluded humans use to coerce themselves into believing that they are the masters of their fate. The only true freedom is in the blood, Anise; the blood that you and I share. For we are family bound far tighter than any born of human seed.” He opened his arms wide, as if to welcome her home. “Return with me, Anise, and all things will be forgiven and everything will go back to the way it was before.”

Anise felt her defenses start to melt. Although she still hated Morgan with a white-hot intensity, part of her also wanted to surrender to the protection of his embrace. Thinking for herself was exhausting, even frightening. Things would be so much better if she simply allowed Father to resume control. It would be so easy to say yes and to return to Ghost Trap and Fell and…

She shook herself, chasing the comforting, numbing thoughts from her head. If she gave up, she would simply be giving him what he wanted. She had to stay angry if she was going to keep him from winning. She has to be strong, if not for herself, then for Lethe.

“You can’t fool me anymore, ‘Father’!” she spat. “I’m not going back!”

The pyrotic, its skin the color of barbecued meat, wandered over to the corner of the room where an old television sat bolted atop a pedestal stand. Although its eyes resembled hard-boiled eggs, this did not seem to impinge it ability to navigate. Suddenly the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies came blaring from the speakers at full volume.

Morgan spun around, his face livid. “Turn that shit off! Renfield! Get it away from that damn idiot box!”

As the psychic approached the elemental, the pyrotic made a noise like live steam escaping a radiator. After a tense second or two, the pyrotic stepped aside, allowing the Renfield to turn off the television. Suddenly there was a loud report and one side of the Renfield’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and brains. Morgan, his ears ringing from the gunshot, turned back to find Anise pointing a .38 directly between his eyes.

“Put the gun down, Anise,” he said sternly.

She pulled the trigger a second time. However, her hands were shaking so badly the slug struck Morgan in the shoulder instead of the head.

“Nice try, Anise. But no cigar.”

“My name’s Lakisha, asshole!” she snarled as she shoved the muzzle of the under her chin and fired a third and final time. Her head opened like a piñata, spraying the wall with the raw material of memory.

Nasakenai removed the bloodstained bundle from the bed and held it out to his master while Morgan stared at the mess dripping from the walls as if divining omens.

The vampire grimaced at the sight of the mutant baby’s hideous puckered mouth and bat-like nose. Enraged, he snatched up the offending corpse and shook it like a rag doll.

“This is Howell’s doing! He assured me the child would pass for human! The bastard lied to me! Lied! I’ll make that junkie pay for this!” He hurled the dead baby at its mother’s body, turning his back on the tableau in disgust. “Torch it! I don’t want any evidence left behind!”

The pyrotic nodded its understanding and stepped forward. A gout of liquid flame leapt from its mouth, like the stream from a flamethrower, coating the bed and its lifeless occupants. Within seconds the odor of burning mattress and roasting meat filled the room.

Morgan stepped outside and scowled at the night sky. His mouth tasted of ash and failure, and there was only one thing that could wash it away: the blood of his enemy, the woman called Sonja.

“Keep your hands where I can see ‘em!”

Morgan turned to see an elderly man armed with a double-barreled shotgun hurrying towards him from across the parking lot. The inn-keeper’s bathrobe flapped open, exposing faded pajama bottoms and a stained T-shirt.

“What in hell’s going on here?” the old man demand. “I heard gunshots! Where’s the Smiths?”

“Smiths?” Morgan raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“ You better answer me, fellah, or I’m liable to blow a hole in you! I ain’t one to be fucked with!”

“Indeed,” Morgan agreed.

Just then Nasakenai and the pyrotic stepped out of the motel room to stand on either side of Morgan. Although neither man was armed, the motel manager frowned and took an automatic step backward. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the flames reflected in the windows.

“You crazy bastards set fire to my place!”

Morgan, bored with the confrontation, turned his back on the man. “Take care of him,” he yawned.

“Where you think you’re going, asshole?” The manager’s voice wavered as he fought to control his anger. He stepped forward, shouldering the shotgun. “You’re staying put until the state police get here!”

In response the pyrotic belched forth a fireball the size of a cabbage, which struck the old man square in the chest. He dropped his weapon and frantically clawed at the flames eating his clothes and skin, only to spread it to his hands and upper arms. Screaming like an angry blue jay, the old man threw himself to the ground and rolled in the dirt and gravel, spreading the fire to his pajama pants and hair. During his final, conscious moments, he tried to drag himself back the way he came, his ears filled with the sound of his own flesh hissing and crackling like bacon fat in a frying pan. He succeeded in crawling six feet before he was completely consumed.

The pyrotic squatted next to the smoldering remains and inhaled the blue-white flames back into his nose and open mouth. The intense heat had reduced the old man’s skull to the size of an orange. Nasakenai signaled impatiently for the elemental to get back in the Mercedes.

Morgan slid behind the wheel of the Ferrari, sneering at Anise’s crude hotwiring job. Within seconds he was speeding down the highway, the Rolls and Mercedes following in his wake. The night was young and there was much to do.

Chapter Seventeen

“What the hell are we gonna do with a baby, for crying out loud?” Palmer exclaimed. “I don’t know the first thing feeding them, do you?”

Lethe, nestled in an impromptu bassinet made from clean towels and an open bureau drawer, waved her arms and kicked her legs as if semaphoring her agreement with Palmer’s statement.

“Well, here’s where you’re gonna learn,” Sonja replied, tossing a box of disposable diapers at him like a medicine ball.

“If you think I’m taking care of that, you’re crazy!” he snorted.

“You can’t just stick the kid in a tube sock and hose her off once a week,” Sonja pointed out. “I bought enough canned formula from the market down the street to last her a few days, plus a couple of bottles and a pacifier. You can heat up her formula in the guest microwave. We promised Anise we’d take care of her…”

“You promised, not me!” Palmer said with a shake of his head. “I’ll fight fuckin’ monsters for you, babe; I’ll even engage in breaking and entering. But I am not changing diapers! Besides, how do you know she won’t turn into something like the first one?”

“She’s just a baby! There’s nothing to be worried about.”

“If she’s ‘just’ a baby, what is it with her eyes?”

Sonja plucked at her ward’s makeshift blankets, Lethe peeked out of her swaddling, regarding her with golden, pupil-less eyes, and gave Sonja a toothless grin.“Okay, so her eyes are screwed up. Is that a fuckin’ crime?”

“You weren’t the one her evil twin tried to turn into Gerber’s strained beef!” Palmer countered.

Lethe gurgled and kicked and waved her arms even more. Sonja had to admit she had very little experience with children, especially ones so young, but she was certain Anise’s child was unusually active for a baby not even a day old. She’d be damned if she was going to mention that fact to Palmer. He was spooked enough as it was.

“Look, Palmer, I’m not asking you to take her to raise. I’m just asking you to baby-sit for a couple of hours. If we’re going to catch a jet to Yucatan, I have to check with a few of my...associates. And I sure as hell can’t do it dragging around a papoose.”

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he sighed. “But just this once.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to be quick about it,” Sonja promised him as she headed out the door. “Everything you need to fix her bottle should be in the grocery bag. Just read the labels on the can—they’re pretty self-explanatory.”

As the door closed behind her, Palmer grimaced and turned his disapproving gaze to Lethe in her sock-drawer bassinette.

“Sure, you’re cute now. But if you try anything funny, you’re going out the fuckin’ window. You got that, munchkin?” he warned, waving a finger at the newborn for emphasis.

Lethe cooed and yawned, exposing soft pink gums, and wrapped a tiny hand around his finger.

“Yeah, well, don’t you forget it.”

The pay phone stood on the corner of Guerrero and Twenty-First Street, opposite an electronics repair shop with dusty windows full of half assembled or partially computer monitors. The black-and-chrome face of the phone was covered with graffiti; the coin box had been forced open and a yellow adhesive sign bearing the legend OUT OF ORDER was plastered over the coin slot.

Sonja scanned the corner. Across the street, a couple of young men dressed in matching leather jackets and pants strolled arm in arm, walking their Pomeranian, while an intense-looking middle-aged man with heavy eyebrows ducked into an espresso bar. Somewhere a police siren wailed, throwing echoes against the buildings that lined the street. Satisfied the area was clean, she sauntered from her post inside a nearby doorway and picked up the dead receiver. The plastic was cold and hard in her hand.

She placed the earpiece to her head and casually stabbed the pay phone’s push buttons. There was stone silence, then the sound of a receiver half a country away being lifted off its hook. “Yeah?” said a heavy, almost liquid voice.

“I need to talk to Malfeis.”

The voice on the other end slurped. “Yeah. Sure. Who calling?”

“The Blue Woman.”

Suddenly Malfeis was on the line. She could tell by the clicking of dentures that he had exchanged the skate punk for something older. “Sonja! Chicky-baby! Sorry ‘bout the slug. Breakin’ in a nephew—what can I say? So, what can I do for you?”

“Mal, I’m between your cousin and the deep blue sea out here. I need magic.”

“What about Li Lijing? Can’t he hook you up?”

Sonja shook her head. “This is out of his league. I need serious mojo.”

“Uh, look, sweetie, I wish I could help you out, but…”

“But what?” she frowned.

“I don’t know what you did out there, cupcake, but Morgan’s stock’s falling like a lead turd in the Mariana Trench! And a lot of the big boys in the First Hierarchy aren’t exactly overjoyed, if you catch my drift. I’m in deep with the family over this, Sonja. I’m under orders not to give you the time of day, much less tell you where to score.”

“Mal! Damn you, you know I’m good for it! I can get you Mengele’s jawbone! The real one, not that fake they dug up in South America. C’mon, I’m not shitting you—I gotta score!”

“Okay,” he sighed. “Tell you what; since you’ve been such a good customer over the years, I’m gonna help you out. But just this once, capisce? I don’t want it getting around I’m a soft touch.”

“Thanks, Mal! I owe you!”

“More than you realize. Okay, there’s this bar south of Market called the Shadow Box. Go there and wait for my operative. He should be there in an hour.”

“What’s he look like?”

“Don’t worry—you’ll know him when you see him.”

It was after midnight and things were just getting heated up at the Shadow Box. A deejay standing atop a neon-lit dais was busily mixing a thundering mixture of hip-hop, retro disco, and acid house. Lights hanging from the rafters threw starkly elongated shadows of the dancers onto the club’s walls, who moved in a highly stylized manner and seem more focused on their own shadows than their partners. It was times like these that she found herself embarrassed at ever having been human.

“Talk about dancing with yourself,” she muttered in disgust.

She wished Mal had picked a rendezvous site a little less crowded, but beggars don’t exactly get a choice in such matters. A gaggle of stylishly dressed future executives-on-the-make hurried by, jostling her in their rush to the dance floor. She briefly contemplated hamstringing one of them, only to push the thought aside. She couldn’t risk calling attention to herself just yet.

Bars and nightclubs always brought out the worst in her. She suspected it had something to do with the volatile emotions generated in such places, which often stimulated the Other and excited it to mayhem. Even now she could feel its ominous presence just below the surface of her ego, like a shark patrolling its territory.

The music got faster and louder, causing the silhouettes on the walls to jerk and prance like Burmese shadow-puppets. She consulted her watch. Mal’s contact would be arriving soon.

The hairs on the back of her neck bristled as a spiky, adrenaline-charged surge of anger and excitement, as cold and bracing as vodka straight from the freezer, surged through her system. However, the emotion wasn’t hers, but unintentionally broadcast by someone in the bar. Someone really pissed off.

Sonja turned to scan the interior of the club, but all she saw was a solid wall of young men and women, dancing, drinking and talking over the music blaring from the speakers. She shifted spectrums, searching for the telltale aureole that marked a Pretender, but there was nothing there but the comparatively weak flickering of human consciousness, augmented by drugs or hormones.

It was then that the second jolt of hatred struck her, causing her to gasp as if caught in the grip of an intense orgasm. The Other moaned in delight, forcing Sonja to bite her lip in hopes the pain and blood would sidetrack it. Emotions as dark and powerful as hate provided vampires with as much nourishment as a seven-course dinner and a high that made crack look like baby aspirin. She had to get out of here. Fuck Mal’s mojo-worker. She had to get away from this place, crammed full of empty-eyed food tubes, before she lost control and the Other rose in her place. She hadn’t fed since she took down that pickpocket in Chinatown, making her susceptible to the Other’s inner voice. She had to leave or something really bad was going to happen.

She pushed away from the bar and began shouldering her way to the exit. She bumped against a club-goer, sloshing beer on his fashionably distressed designer jeans.

“Hey, bitch! Watch it!” he snarled, grabbing her by the elbow.

Sonja flashed her shaded eyes in his direction and growled like a caged tiger. The startled club-goer let go as she resumed pushing her way through the mass of bodies. Suddenly another hand, this one far stronger, clamped itself onto her shoulder.

A third wave of hate flowed into, this time so strong it was like being slammed in the heart with a needle full of adrenaline.

As she turned around to face her attacker, she could not help but laugh at her own foolishness. “That devil-bastard set me up! I’d damn him to hell if it wasn’t redundant. Next time I see him, I’m gonna cut his stash with the bones of martyrs.”

Fell bared his fangs in ritual challenge. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about, whore, and I don’t care! I’m going up make you pay for killing Anise and our baby!”

“Do you always talk like a fucking cliché?” she sneered.

He moved fast, even by vampire standards. Sonja’s head rocked back, blood filling her mouth, before she realized he’d raised his fists. The crowd surrounding them was too densely packed for her to do more than stagger back two or three steps.

“Okay. I deserved that and I took it,” she said, wiping the blood from her chin. “But I didn’t kill Anise. I’m telling you the truth, no matter what your so-called ‘Father’ told you.”

This time she saw his punch coming and grabbed his fist, stopping it in mid-air. Fell grimaced and tried to pull free, but she refused to let him go.

“I’m trying to be nice, but you’re not making it easy,” she warned him. “I don’t want to hurt you, kid. But I will if I have to.”

Fell tried to hit her with his other hand, but she stopped that one the same way. “Let me go, murderer!” he snarled as he tried to wrest himself free of her grip.

The hate inside him flowed into Sonja like smoke into a bottle. The charge she received was so powerful the hair on her head lifted like the crest of a cockatoo. She laughed and blue-white sparks flew from the tip of her tongue. Her voice sounded like she’d gargled with ground glass and battery acid.

“Why should I?” the Other snarled. “I don’t know how Morgan thinks he’s going to create his own little super-race with a lap dog like you for a stud. Go ahead, lover boy! Keep hating! Hate me as hard as you can! It only makes me stronger! But if you wanna kill me, you gotta play hardball! Think you can handle that?”

A clutch of executive secretaries out for a night on the town screamed as Fell crash-landed onto their table, sending their drinks flying in every direction. He instantly righted himself like a cat and launched himself at his enemy, hurling aside surprised club-goers as if they were bowling pins. She calmly stood her ground as he rushed towards her, only to dodge his blows with the swiftness of a cobra at the very last second, chuckling in amusement as if he was nothing more than a clumsy schoolboy. The sound of the Other’s demonic laughter spurred him to even greater fury, delivering rapid-fire blows to her head and upper torso that would have killed a human but merely staggered her.

As they battled, those closest to them in the surrounding crowd desperately tried to escape the carnage, only to be pushed back by those eager to find out what was happening. It wasn’t until the switchblade came out, however, that the screams began in earnest. Fell snatched up one of the vacated chairs tables, wielding it like a lion tamer. As he lunged at her, she dropped down and swept his legs out from under him. Fell suddenly found himself pinned to the floor by his opponent, who grinned down at him as she squatted atop his chest, a dark fire seeming to burn behind the tint lenses that obscured her eyes.

But as the Other, blood streaming from her nose, raised the silver switchblade to plunge it into Fell’s heart, her face abruptly contorted, as if in pain. She shook her head, as if trying to clear it of an annoying voice, as her nemesis ascended once more from the pit and laid claim to the body they both shared.

Sonja, once more in control, snapped the switchblade shut and returned it to her jacket. She then grabbed Fell by his long yellow hair and yanked him to his feet. He tried to pull away, but she refused to let go. She pointed at the people on the dance floor, entranced by deafening rhythms and their own shadows.

“You see that?” she shouted. “That’s exactly what you’re doing! You’re fighting your own shadow, not your real enemy!”

“Liar!” Fell shrieked as he threw himself forward, leaving her holding a handful of scalp. “You turned Anise against me! You destroyed my life!” He then turned and grabbed a nearby club-goer, lifted him over his head and hurled him at his opponent. Sonja easily ducked as the screaming man crashed into the mirror behind the nearby bar.

The bartender yelled something and disappeared behind the counter. Sonja vaulted the bar just as he resurfaced with a shotgun. She snatched the weapon from his hands before he had time to snap the breach closed. “Thanks, buddy,” she growled. The bartender turned and fled, jumping over the injured man who had collided with the mirror sprawled on the bar mats.

Sonja quickly spun around, leveling the shotgun at Fell as he mounted the bar. The young vampire froze at the sight of the double-aught pointed inches from his chest.

“Even a Noble like Morgan would have problems surviving a blast from this distance, much less a pantywaist like you,” she warned. “Whattaya think, pretty boy? Wanna chance it?”

Fell did not answer but instead dropped back, keeping the bar between.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought,” Sonja said with a humorless laugh. She hopped onto the counter top as easily as a cat climbing a fence, so she could get a better look at the crowded club. “But before we take care of business, it’s time I cleared the field of interference!”

She spotted two Renfields standing near the exit, one African-American, the other Japanese. They were the ones responsible for crowding the bar and cloaking Fell’s presence so he could approach without her recognizing him. Fell was nowhere near self-aware enough to be able to attempt such psychic sleight-of-hand. It also explained why so few of the club-goers seemed to react to the brawl. The Renfields were creating a veil, blinding the humans in the crowd as to what was going on. It was obvious they were setting up a killing floor—but for whom?

She opened fire on the African-America sensitive, spraying his brains across some yuppies. The second shot missed the Japanese psychic and struck the investment banker from Pacific Heights who was standing next to him, sending skull fragments flying like shrapnel. The Renfield shrieked and clapped his hands over his eyes. The veil lifted and suddenly people were screaming and shouting and knocking over tables and trampling each other in a wild scramble for the exit.

The crowd’s panic made her giddy as a hit of nitrous. She had only a moment to enjoy the rush before Fell was on her, his face contorted into a mask of animal rage. While he might not be advanced enough in evolution to tap into the negative emotions swirling about them, he definitely seemed to have a contact high. He pounced on her like a young lion bringing down its first kill, bearing Sonja to the floor. She snarled and brought her knee into his groin, forcing him to let go of her throat.

Sonja staggered to her feet and grabbed Fell by the back of his collar, throwing him against wall. He no longer the pretty boy she first saw at Ghost Trap. It was clear that his regenerative powers were far slower than hers, as his eyes were nearly obscured by swollen bruises, his nose was broken in at least three places, and his lower lip drooped like a mule’s.

“Just-just wait until our Father comes!” he gasped through bleeding lips.

“You dumb meat puppet!” she snapped. “You still don’t understand, do you? He set us both up! You don’t stand a snowball’s chance against me, and Morgan knows it! He sent you here to die, Fell! You’re nothing but a decoy, sent to distract me until his pet Renfields could work up a serious enough whammy to take me out.”

“You’re lying!” he sobbed angrily. “Father would never betray me like that!”

“What’s your name?” Sonja asked as she withdrew her switchblade.

He looked at her as if she had asked him who was buried in Grant’s tomb. “You know what my name is. It’s Fell.”

“Wrong answer,” she said, severing his left ear.

Fell screamed and grabbed at the side of his head, but was unable to escape her grip.

“Okay, I’m going to ask you again,” she said evenly. “What’s your name?”

“It’s Fell, damn it! What’s the fuck wrong with—yaaaah!” This time the switchblade sliced open his left nostril.

“No, no!” she admonished. “You’re not listening! I said what’s your name?”

“What do you expect me to say?” he sobbed. “It’s Fell! It’s always been Fell!”

“I’m only gonna ask you one more time, then it’s for keeps, understand?” she sighed, slicing away his right eyebrow. “What is your name?”

“I told you it’s—” Suddenly his eyes grew wide and his mouth slack, as if he’d just remembered something incredibly important. “Oh. My. God. It’s Tim. My name is Tim.”

Sonja heaved a sigh of relief and stepped aside, allowing him to slump to the floor, hiding his mutilated face in bloodstained hands. His shoulders shook as he tried to cry. She could hear sirens coming closer.

“I didn’t have the time to deprogram you properly,” she said apologetically. “So I had to take drastic measures. C’mon, kid.” Her voice softened as she offered him her hand. “C’mon, we gotta split. The cops will be here any second.”

“Where are we going?” he asked fearfully, shrinking from her touch.

“I’m taking you to your daughter.”

Chapter Eighteen

Palmer leaned against the headboard of the bed, cradling Lethe in the corner of his left arm while holding her bottle in his right. He was amazed something so tiny could possess such an appetite. He didn’t look up at the sound of the hotel room door being unlocked. His psychic ability was already developed enough that he already recognized Sonja’s presence half-way down the hall.

“You know, you were right about her, Sonja,” he admitted sheepishly. “She’s not like her twin at all. She’s beautiful, and she’s got such tiny fingers, with perfect little fingernails...”

“Is that her? Is that my daughter?”

Palmer looked up from the feeding baby, startled to see a young man standing next to Sonja. He had long, blond hair and one side of his face looked like someone had used it for batting practice. The young vampire shifted about uneasily, like a schoolboy standing before the principal.

“Palmer, this is Lethe’s father,” Sonja said. She turned to look at their guest. “By the way, what do you want use to call you? Tim or Fell?”

“I might as well stay Fell,” he replied with a shrug. “Being Tim didn’t work out that well.” He took a hesitant step forward. “Can I hold her?”

“I don’t see why not,” Sonja replied. “After all, she is your daughter.”

Grudgingly, Palmer surrendered Lethe to her father, who lifted her up so he could see her. Fell’s bruised lips pulled into a smile at the sight of his daughter’s face. “She looks so very much like Anise,” he whispered as he sank down onto the edge of the bed, “This is happening too fast. There’s too much to think, too much I’m starting to remember…”

Sonja knelt beside Fell, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Start from the beginning. Who were you before you met Morgan?”

“My name is—was?—Timothy Sorrell. I was a sophomore English Major at Berkeley. I’m from Indiana, originally. My parents and older sister were killed in a car crash when I was ten. I got passed around a lot amongst my relatives after that. They were good people, but they didn’t really know what to do with me, so they left me to my own devices most of the time. I was a pretty morbid kid, fascinated and terrified by death at the same time. I really got into stuff like vampires, ghouls, mummies—the whole undead thing. By the time I graduated high school, I was dressed in black all the time and spending my money on occult literature. You know, your typical Food Court Goth.

“My first few months at Berkeley were okay. I even met people who didn’t think I was weird for liking the kind of stuff I was into. But during my sophomore year I started having these... dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“Bad ones. Full of blood and walking dead things. When I was younger I used to dream I was a vampire like Christopher Lee or Frank Langella, seducing nubile young women. But these new dreams were different. Sometimes I’d see myself and I looked like a rotting corpse, and my victims weren’t beautiful women but old bag ladies and skanky-looking whores. Instead of surrendering to my hypnotic stare, they would scream and try to get away, so I hurt them even more for trying to escape. It wasn’t at all like in the movies. But what really scared me was the pleasure I got from watching them scream and die. I always knew I was a little, you know, eccentric, but this was the first time I was honestly worried about my own sanity. That’s when I decided to seek professional help...

“Dr. Caron came highly recommended.” Fell’s laugh was dry and brittle. “He seemed to understand what I was going through. Soon after I started seeing him the nightmares turned back to the wet dreams I was familiar with. He told me the reason for my nightmares was that I felt dissatisfied with my life and resented never having known a ‘real’ family. He then invited me to be a part of a special experimental therapy session at his private estate. I think you know the rest.”

Sonja nodded. “Morgan selected those who wouldn’t be readily missed and already displayed certain...tendencies he could work to his advantage. Of the ten he hand-picked, you and Anise were the only ones to survive, am I right?”

Fell nodded, looking down at his daughter, who was innocently playing with one of his blood-smeared fingers. “It was horrible—I can still hear their screams, even now. I remember thinking how beautiful Anise was back then, back when we both were human. To tell you the truth, I was kind of surprised she was even in the group. She seemed so together, you know? I knew I didn’t stand a chance with a woman like her. Maybe that’s why it was so easy for me to believe ‘Father’ when he told me I was Anise’s husband.

“I realize now that she never truly loved me, that she was merely doing Morgan’s bidding. But what I felt for her was completely real—Morgan never had to ‘make’ me love her. That’s why losing her hurt so much. It was real love I felt for her, not pretend. When ‘Father’ told me that you’d murdered both her and the baby, I went mad. I wanted to avenge myself and prove I was worthy to be called his son.” He gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. “So what do I do now?”

“You can come with us to the Yucatan,” Sonja said gently. “You can raise your child in peace there.”

“How can I possibly be a fit father?” he exclaimed. “I’m not even human!”

“Neither is your child,” she reminded him. “Fell, you don’t have to go through this alone. I’ve been where you are now, and know what you’re feeling. I can teach you how to master your powers and gain control over the darkness inside you. That’s a luxury I never truly had. Although I had some guidance early on, most of what I know I learned the hard way, and I have the autopsy scars to prove it. And I’ll the first to admit that there are still plenty of things about the Real World I don’t know. But I can tell you that the next stage of your development as a dhampire will be dangerous, and if you’re not careful, it will cost you your soul.”

“You mean I still have one?” he asked in surprise.

“Like I said at Ghost Trap—you and I are brother and sister. You’re like me—you never died long enough for your soul to leave. The only difference between the two of us was that I was a fluke, while you were deliberately created. I’m not sure how, but Morgan succeeded in altering your genetic structure into that of a vampire’s without killing you. Right now you’re still more human than vampire—that’s how you and Anise were capable of conceiving. But it won’t be long before the vampiric side of your personality will start to emerge. And, believe me; you’re going to need help learning how to control it. There’s no going back to what you were, Fell. Adapt or die. Those are your only choices.”

“But what about Morgan?” Fell replied. “He’s not going to simply let us waltz away free.”

“I promised Anise I’d protect her baby from Morgan. There’s only one way I can do that: kill him.”

There was still enough of the old programming clinging to Fell’s synapses that the very suggestion seemed to shock him. “Is that even possible?” he gasped.

“As long as Morgan continues to exist, we’ll be constantly looking over our shoulders, waiting for his next move. We won’t be safe and, more importantly, neither will Lethe. It’s got to be done.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

Palmer jumped up, making ‘time-out’ gestures with his hands. “Whoa! Wait a minute! What happens if you end up getting killed instead of Morgan? What happens then?”

“If I’m not back by dawn, take Fell and Lethe to the airport. You’ll find passports in the bottom of my overnight bag. There are one way tickets to Mérida waiting at the Taca International desk. Once you arrive in Mérida, check into the Smoking Gods Hotel. The manager there is holding an envelope that, essentially, transfers a company called Indigo Imports—and all its assets—over to you. It’s the best I could do on such short notice.”

“You had this planned all along, didn’t you?” Palmer frowned.

“I told you I’d take care of things, didn’t I? You were planning on retiring from the detective racket, anyway. Now you can relax and sell stuffed toads dressed like mariachi bands and Day of the Dead tableaux to trendy Manhattan boutiques, just like you always wanted,” she said with a crooked smile.

“I’m going with you,” Fell announced suddenly.

“Are you sure about that?” Sonja frowned.

“The bastard used me! He preyed on my weaknesses and exploited me! If I don’t have the right to kill him, who does? I’ll fight you all over again, if I have to.”

“Very well,” Sonja sighed in resignation. “He won’t expect us to move against him so quickly. In fact, it’s highly likely he believes I’ve killed you.”

“What about me?” asked Palmer.

“Someone has to look after Lethe. Like I said, if you don’t hear from us come dawn, take a cab to the airport and do exactly what I described.” Sonja stepped forward and took Palmer’s hands into her own and gave them a gentle squeeze. “I have to do this, Palmer. You know you can’t stop me from going. But please try to understand why.”

“I do understand,” he said quietly. “Just try your damndest to come back.”

“You’re going to do just fine, whether I’m with you or not,” she said reassuringly.

“I don’t want to do fine without you,” he replied. “I just want you.”

She smiled then, and it was as if she were sixteen and human again.

Palmer turned to retrieve Lethe from her father. “I’ll take good care of your little girl,” he said. “Don’t worry; I used to have a kid, myself, a long time ago.”

Palmer didn’t like the idea of Fell accompanying Sonja to Ghost Trap to attack Morgan. Although he didn’t envy Sonja and Fell their task, part of him wished he could be with them. After all, he’d been in on the case since the beginning, and it was only natural for him to want to be there when it ended—no matter what the outcome. But he had to admit that when it came down to battling powerful six-hundred-year-old vampire lords, his twenty-five years of street-smarts as a P.I. weren’t much use.

He carefully returned Lethe to her makeshift bassinette and began packing his suitcase. He was astonished by how easily the golden-eyed infant seemed to override his usual ambivalence toward small children. Sonja was right, though. Lethe was their biggest concern. Since she was unable to protect herself, it was up to him, should the others fail, to make sure she didn’t fall into Morgan’s hands.

Suddenly there came a knock on the door, interrupting his train of thought. Palmer frowned; it couldn’t possibly be Maid service, not at this hour. There was second knock, this one heavy enough to rattle the doorjamb. Palmer took his backup gun, a Luger, out of its case and quickly checked the breech.

“Who is it?” he barked.

The hinges on the door bulged inward in answer, followed by the sound of metal and wood splintering. The hotel room door flew open, hanging from its hinges like a broken wing.

The ogre had to duck his head in order to enter the room. Dressed in a trench coat over a black turtleneck sweater and corduroy jeans, Kief could almost pass for linebacker out on the town, save for his jutting tusks.

“Pangloss say you come now,” the ogre rumbled, emitting a rank odor of bull-ape aggression that made Palmer’s testes crawl.

“But he promised to leave me alone!” Palmer explained. “I’m Sonja’s Renfield now!”

The ogre chuckled, exposing a mouthful of yellow, serrated teeth. “She leave. Gone to play with Morgan. She not coming back. Pangloss say he got dibs.”

“Back off, Kong! I don’t care if the Pope himself wants an audience!” Palmer said as he pointed the Luger at the ogre. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

Kief growled his indifference and continued to advance. Palmer fired the Luger, only to have the bullet struck the thick ridge of the ogre’s brow and slide across his bald pate like a pad of butter on a hot skillet. Except for a thin red line bisecting his skull, Kief showed no ill effect from being shot in the head at what amounted to point-blank range.

“That sting,” the ogre grunted, cuffing Palmer with the back of his hand.

It was like meeting the business end of a weighted Louisville Slugger. Palmer sailed across the room, landing on a small table in the corner that collapsed under his weight. Palmer struggled to sit up, his vision swimming from the blow. He cringed at the sight of the ogre lumbering towards him, displaying a fearsome shark’s grin. Then, to his amazement, the giant came to an abrupt halt.

Kief tilted his head and sniffed the air with wide, gorilla-like nostrils. He beamed an idiotic smile, a rope of thick saliva dangling from his lower jaw. “I smell baby.” A gray, forked tongue snapped out of the ogre’s gaping mouth, licking his cracked lips. His eyes narrowed as he regarded Palmer. “You got baby around here?”

“No! I mean, of course not!” Palmer replied anxiously. “What would I be doing with a baby? You must be smelling the Joneses down the hall. They’ve got plenty of babies—at least three or four! Nice big, fat juicy babies. But there are no babies in here though!”

The ogre narrowed his eyes further, unconvinced. “Baby smell strong.” He snuffled again, casting for scent like a bloodhound. “Real strong!”

And then Lethe began to cry.

The ogre grinned in triumph. “You do got baby!”

“Leave her alone, damn you!” Palmer shouted.

But it was too late. Kief was already turning towards the dresser, attracted by the infant’s thin, kitten-like wail. Palmer pulled himself to his feet and launched himself after the ogre, trying to ignore the pain in his head. To his horror, he saw the ogre pick up the crying baby, dangling her by her ankles like a live chicken.

“I’ll go peacefully if you just leave her alone!” he promised, but the ogre didn’t seem to hear him.

“Yum-yum! Babies good eatin’!” Kief intoned as he tilted back his head and dropped his jaw, lowering the frightened infant into his gaping maw.

Suddenly Palmer smells copal burning and he is back in the jungle. He is walking along the narrow path that runs from his people’s village to the natural spring that provides them with their drinking and cooking water. His young son, Tohil, is several lengths ahead of him. Tohil laughs and tosses rocks and sticks at the monkeys and birds in the nearby trees. He turns to wave at Palmer with his small six-fingered hand. Palmer envies the boy his spirit and energy. He has no doubt that Tohil will grow up to be a fine ballplayer some day. Before he finishes the thought, the green parts and jaguar leaps from its hiding place and grabs the boy. Palmer sees the big cat’s sharp fangs sink into his son’s shoulder, the blood leap from his son’s skin. Palmer hurls his spear at the great cat, but it is deflected by a branch. Tohil screams his father’s name as he is pulled from the path into the jungle. Palmer runs to where the jaguar ambushed his only son, but all he finds are bloodstains, bright as rubies, splashed across the broad leaves. The men from the village search for Tohil the rest of the day, but the boy is never seen again.

“No!” Palmer screamed as he seized the grief and rage pulsing through his psyche and channeled it outward. It was as if he’d suddenly discovered a third arm, invisible to him until that moment, that allowed him to reach out and squeeze the ogre’s skull moments before he dropped Lethe, headfirst, into his razor-toothed mouth.

Kief grunted as if stricken by a bad attack of gas, and then staggered drunkenly, thick black blood trickling from its nostrils and ears. The ogre gave a bullfrog-like croak and let go of the squalling baby, dropping it onto the nearby bed. Kief pointed a trembling, accusatory finger at Palmer and took an unsteady step in the detective’s direction.

“You...”

Palmer squeezed again, and this time pink fluid seeped from around the ogre’s eyes and a froth of blood and mucus began to drip from his mouth. Palmer took a step away from the advancing child-eater.

“Did... this...”

Jesus, what does it take to kill one of these bastards, he grimaced to himself, a direct nuclear strike?

Just then Kief finally collapsed onto the floor, his brains, reduced to a jellied consommé, seeping from his eyes and ears.

Palmer stepped over the fallen giant and scooped up the crying child. The minute he picked her up, her wails died down to whimpers.

“There, there, bad monster’s gone now,” he said soothingly.

However, he knew better than to believe his own reassurances. If Pangloss was still looking to claim him for his own, the old vampire was sure to send other operatives once Kief didn’t return with the goods. They couldn’t remain at the motel, that much was certain. Even if the management was willing to overlook the baby they returned with after their trip to wine country, he doubted they were willing to ignore gunshots and undeniably dead giant motherfucker.

Palmer reclaimed his Luger, wrapped Lethe as warmly as he could and put on his coat. He had no other choice now but to take a cab out to the airport, sans baggage, and wait things out there.

With Lethe tucked hidden from sight inside is raincoat, Palmer hurried to the stairwell just as the elevator down the hall pinged open. He didn’t look to see who—or what—got out. Four flights later, he strolled through the lobby, trying his best to look nonchalant while gasping for breath like a landed trout. The aged clerk manning the registration desk glanced up from a Cantonese newspaper, shrugged, and resumed his reading.

Once outside, the panic Palmer hurried through the shadowy streets in search of a taxi, only to find them deserted. Without realizing it, he turned a corner and found himself standing in a narrow alley papered with peeling movie posters. His heart was beating way too fast and his breathing sounded ragged. He wanted a smoke real bad, but he’d left his cigarettes back at the hotel room. Behind him, a bottle skittered across pavement and broke.

He turned to find several figures blocking the entrance to the alley, huddled together like mounds of ambulatory garbage. Palmer’s fear drained as he realized he was simply looking at street people and not Pangloss’s hirelings. Lethe stirred against him and gave out a kittenish mew.

A man dressed in filthy castoffs with newspapers swaddling his feet shuffled forward. To Palmer’s surprise, the vagrant responded to Lethe’s call with a slightly deeper mewl of his own. The others grouped behind him grew excited and muttered amongst themselves. Palmer took a tentative step forward.

“Uh, look, I know this sounds weird, but can anyone here tell me where I am?”

An old woman, her hair the color and consistency of a dirty string mop, sidled towards him. She wore several layers of sweaters over a dingy, printed housedress. She smiled, displaying bare gums and golden pupil-less eyes that glowed in the dark.

Palmer jumped back in alarm from the old woman, his skin tingling as if he’d just received a mild electric shock. Although he’d never really seen them, he knew these creatures were what Sonja had called seraphim.

The seraph with its feet wrapped in newspapers made a reassuring hand gesture, then spoke in a rushed mixture of crystal chimes, bird song, silver bells and crashing surf. The beauty of its language brought tears to Palmer’s eyes. And even though he could not make out a single word, he understood perfectly.

Nodding his assent, he held Lethe so the assembled seraphim could see her. They once again grew excited and crowded in closer so that they could touch her tender baby flesh with their callused, dirty hands. Lethe did not seem to mind and responded to their strange, ethereal language with her own, babyish version.

The sweater woman made a sound like a dolphin and began spinning in place, like a bedraggled whirling dervish. Within seconds the others joined in her dance. Palmer watched in dumb fascination as blue-white sparks leapt from the twirling seraphim, streaming from their outstretched hands and hair. Within seconds the ragged street people had been transformed into luminous dust devils. Palmer was so dazzled by the beauty of what was happening he was unprepared when one of the light-beings danced forward and plucked Lethe from his hands.

“Hey! Give me back my baby!” he shouted.

Lethe giggled joyously as she was lifted high into the air on a pillow of colored lights, surrounded by a cadre of rainbow-colored whirlwinds. One of the seraphim paused long enough to twine itself about his shoulders, whispering to Palmer in its strange non-language. He need not fear for the child. She would be returned to him when it was safe to do so. Palmer tried to snare the bright intelligence with his own mind, but it was like trying to trap quicksilver in his bare hands. The seraph eeled its way free of his grasp, more amused than insulted by such a clumsy attempt at interrogation.

Lethe bobbed in the night air, smiling down at Palmer like an infant saint taken up by angels. Within moments she had drifted away from view, like a balloon caught in a jet stream. Palmer knew he had nothing to fear from the seraphim. If anything, Lethe was far safer with them than she ever could be with him.

Now he was free to follow Sonja. Provided he could find ready transportation. As he exited the alley he scooped up a loose brick, hefting it experimentally. He hadn’t boosted a car without his tools since Nirvana’s final tour.

The Tiger’s Cage

Thou who, abruptly as a knife,

Didst come into my heart; thou who

A demon horde into my life

Didst enter, wildly dancing, through

The doorways of my sense unlatched

To make my spirit thy domain.

—Baudelaire, The Vampire

Chapter Nineteen

Fell sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window at the countryside racing by as they sped back towards the Sonoma Valley. In his tattered denims and loose-fitting shirt, he could almost pass for a college boy, provided you ignored the dried blood and his missing ear.

“I’m sorry I had to fuck you up like that, kid,” Sonja said.

Fell blinked, started from wherever his thoughts had taken him. “Don’t worry about it. I understand what you were trying to do.” His hand strayed to where his ear had been. “Besides, it’ll all grow back, won’t it?”

“In time,” she replied. “Your regenerative powers at this stage are still fairly weak, though. Give it a couple of days, maybe a week, and you’ll be good as new.”

Fell grunted and glanced at his warped reflection in the windshield. “What about my eyes? When will my eyes end up like yours?”

Sonja shrugged, trying to pretend it didn’t matter. “Hard to say. It took several years for mine to mutate. Perhaps yours never will. Maybe it’s different with different people. Who knows?” Sonja cleared her throat. “Both Anise and one of the Renfields mentioned someone called Dr. Howell. Who is he? Another vampire?”

Fell balled his fists. “No, he’s human.”

“Is he a Renfield?”

“Hell, no! Howell openly loathes the Renfields,” he said with a snort. “I guess you could call him a ‘normal’ human. He’s Morgan’s pet mad scientist, although they don’t seem to get along too well. I think I remember him saying something about having been kidnapped.”

“If he’s not a Renfield, and he’s working under duress, what kind of hold does Morgan have over him to make him do his bidding? Is he holding his family hostage?”

“Doc’s a stone junkie,” Fell smirked, holding up an arm and pantomiming sinking a hypodermic needle into his bent elbow. “He gets all the heroin he can handle. And then some.”

“And this guy’s a scientist?”

“That’s what he keeps saying. He claims he’s some kind of hotshot geneticist. Occasionally he would get hopped up and start ranting about how he was our true father. I always thought it was just crazy talk, like we got from the Renfields.”

“How many Renfields does Morgan have at Ghost Trap?”

“There were six, plus Nasakenai,” Fell replied. “They avoided us as much as possible.”

“Is that the Japanese guy I saw at the club?”

“Yeah, that’s him; he’s Morgan’s top Renfield—the only one he ever called by name.”

“Well, I took out one at Ghost Trap this afternoon and one at the bar,” Sonja mused, ticking off the kills on the fingers of her right hand. “Anise said she was forced to dispose of one while escaping. That depletes his stables by half. Does he have any mercs on staff?”

“What?”

“Mercenaries,” she explained. “You know, muscle for hire. A lot of different Pretender species make their way nowadays by hiring themselves out to vampires like Morgan. I already know he’s got a pyrotic on the payroll. Did you see any ogres? Vargr?”

“Whozits?” Fell frowned in bafflement.

“Boy, he really did keep you isolated,” Sonja said, shaking her head,

Fell’s cheeks reddened in embarrassment. “Anise and I were restricted to a suite of rooms on the ground floor for most of what you would call our ‘lives’. The first month or two we were kept in a sterile environment, with only Morgan and Doc Howell allowed around us. After that, we stayed in our suite, save for when the Renfields escorted us to and from Doc’s laboratory on the second floor.

“We were only allowed outside once—it was during the day, and we were under heavy supervision by the Renfields. Dr. Howell was there, too—taking notes and doing things like measuring our core body temperature. I guess he was trying to find out if we’d die when exposed to the sun.”

“Weren’t you even a little bit curious as to what was really going on?”

Fell’s face reddened even further. “Not really. That’s a horrible thing to admit to, but it’s the truth. Anise was a little more inquisitive than I was, and that didn’t become part of her behavior until after she became pregnant. Until yesterday afternoon, it had never occurred to me that the life I was living was in anyway...unusual. After all, I didn’t have anything to compare it to, did I?” Fell shook his head, amazed at his own naiveté. “But what really makes me sick is that a part of me, deep down, liked not having to think. I was never any good at sports back when I was Tim Sorrell, Super-Geek. I never did real well with the girls. I was a gold-plated wimp if ever there was one. Even though I couldn’t consciously access those memories, I realize now it was still buried deep inside me.

“There’s a fully outfitted gymnasium on the second floor we were expected to use. I can bench-press eight hundred pounds. Me! Scrawny little ‘Dracula Weirdo’ Sorrell!” He flexed his biceps, parodying a Charles Atlas-style bodybuilder. For a fleeting moment, he was what he had once been—a bright, sensitive nineteen- year-old boy, standing on the threshold of manhood. Then the smile disappeared and he was staring back out the window again. “Morgan used to talk about ‘the cattle’ and how easy it is to control them. Once he brought in some humans from outside... I don’t know who they were. And he let me...” He closed his eyes, trying to blot the image from his memory. “I played with them.” His voice shook, the words burning his tongue. “There was sex—man, woman—it didn’t matter. And then after that...”

“Fell, you don’t have to tell me this.”

“But I have to! I have to tell someone!” His voice was high and tight, like a frightened girl’s. “My god, Sonja, if I can’t tell you, who can I tell?”

She pursed her mouth into a thin line and nodded. “Go on.”

Fell took a shuddering breath, anxiously knotting and unknotting his fingers in his lap. “After the sex, I kissed them on their arms, legs, groin—everywhere the blood was close to the surface, calling to me—but instead of moaning in pleasure they screamed. It was like my nightmares, only I wasn’t frightened by the things I was doing anymore. I drank, even though I wasn’t hungry. I did it because... because it felt good! Better than sex or drugs or anything else I could compare it to. “Father’ stayed in the room the whole time and watched me do these things, and praised me as his son. I pray to God he was controlling me, compelling me do those horrible things. Because if he wasn’t, I did them of my own free will.”

“What happened in the past stays there,” Sonja said firmly. “Whatever you did while under Morgan’s influence is over and done with now. You have regained your memories of your human self and with them your autonomy. It’s good that you hate Morgan, but be careful with that. Nobles feed on powerful negative emotions like hate and rage. It makes them stronger. You’ve got to shield yourself from Morgan, as it will be your will against his. You have to be strong in here.” She thumped her chest with her fist. “Stronger than the one who Made you, Timothy.”

“Don’t call me that,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m not Tim anymore, not where it really counts. I don’t know who—or what—I am now, but it’s not Timothy Sorrell. But when I think of the things I did before I regained my sense of self, it makes me want to puke. So I guess I’m not what Morgan tried to turn me into, either. I guess that makes me Fell more than I am anyone-or anything-else. Just like you’re more Sonja Blue than Denise Thorne.”

“How did you know about that—?” she asked in surprise.

“When you were working me over at the Shadow Box, I kept getting, I dunno, flashes, I guess. I saw you and Morgan. I saw what he did to make you... what you are.”

A muscle twitched in Sonja’s cheek as she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “You’re right. I don’t really think of myself as Denise anymore. She’s more someone I used to know.”

“Did you like her?” he asked.

Sonja reflected on the question for a moment. “Yeah,” she said with a laugh, “I guess I do.”

“Good. I like Tim, too,” Fell replied with a smile, “now that it’s too late to do him any good.”

“What do you mean you can’t find him?” Morgan bellowed, hurling an ivory music box at the cowering Renfield, who dodged at the last moment, leaving the antique to smash against the teak paneling.

“The doctor is not in his laboratory, nor is he in his assigned room.”

“Are you saying he’s managed to escape?”

“No, of course not,” the nervous Renfield, a balding older man with thick glasses, assured his master. He’s definitely somewhere in the house.”

“If that is the case, why haven’t you located him and brought him before me?”

“He’s not in the nucleus, milord. He’s... somewhere in the in the Ghost Trap itself.” Having delivered this news, the Renfield pulled his neck in between his shoulders like a turtle in anticipation of his master’s wrath.

“Damn his junkie soul to a thousand drug-free hells!” Morgan shrieked, knocking books and rare antiques from a nearby shelf with an angry sweep of his arm. “He did this to me! He deliberately set out to ruin my plans!” The vampire spun back around to face the trembling Renfield, pointing a trembling finger at the whey-faced psychic. “I want the Ghost Trap searched, is that clear? Take the others with you!”

“But-but, milord!” the Renfield sputtered.

“Do it!” Morgan thundered, his voice shaking the very walls.

The Renfield fled the library, leaving Morgan to fume in silence. The scientist had always been unstable. He should never have trusted Howell. Never. But Howell’s erratic behavior was what had brought him under Morgan’s influence to begin with. As much as it galled the vampire lord to admit it, the mistake was his own. He’d been intimidated by the scientist’s technology and allowed him far more autonomy than was prudent. And now he was paying the price for not keeping the bio-geneticist on a tight leash.

If news of his humiliation at the hands of a mere human ever reached the ears of other Nobles, he’d be the laughingstock of the Ruling Class! Worse, he would be perceived as weak, thereby endangering his alliances with the more powerful vampires like Baron Luxor and exposing him to another round of brood wars. He might even be forced to surrender his title of Lord! No doubt it would please snapping jackals like Pangloss and Verité to see him brought low.

This was what his reliance on humankind’s peculiar brand of sorcery, technology and science, had brought him. He should never have relied so heavily on something of human manufacture, yet its inherent power had been too great for him to ignore.

While Howell might be a necromancer of unparalleled power in his wizard’s workshop, it would do him little good once Morgan got his hands on him. Yes, he had all kinds of interesting things planned for the good doctor. Depriving him of his precious white powder was only the first of many cruelties to be inflicted on the thankless swine, followed by a few judiciously applied medical probes. Of course, Howell would be forced to conduct his own flaying and subsequent vivisection, as Morgan had long since evolved beyond the need to soil his own hands with the blood of his victims.

But first the conniving jackal had to be caught, and that was not going to be easy. While Brainerd Howell might be devious, vainglorious and ungrateful, one thing he most definitely was not was stupid. The bastard knew that the labyrinth surrounding Ghost Trap’s nucleus was dangerous, especially to those with psychic abilities. What had originally been advantage in Morgan’s favor now was being turned against him, as there were things roaming the halls of Ghost Trap that did not like outsiders, and Morgan was in no hurry to meet them face-to-face.

“Milord?”

Morgan glanced up from his reverie to glower at Nasakenai. The psychic stood in the doorway to the library, the right side of his head wrapped in sterile gauze.

“Is she dead?”

“Milord, there were— difficulties,” Nasakenai replied nervously. “The rogue called Sonja uncovered our presence and fired upon us with a weapon. My companion was killed outright and I was momentarily... incapacitated.” He gingerly touched the bandage shrouding his right eye.

“What of Fell? Did she kill him?”

“I don’t know, milord. The rogue had the upper hand the last I saw.”

“Is it true that she was a dhampire like the breeders?”

Nasakenai nodded his bandaged head. “I am sure of it, milord. Her aural configuration was identical to those of Anise and Fell, although much stronger. More importantly, she was absorbing and metabolizing the negative energy generated by her opponent.”

Morgan frowned. “Are you sure she was tapping him?”

“I’m positive, milord.”

Morgan contemplated the information Nasakenai had given him for a long moment. Perhaps it was better that his breeding program had collapsed, after all. His plans had revolved around a race of vampires that lived on blood alone. Tapping into negative emotions was something only the older, more evolved Nobles, such as himself, were capable of, and was the source of their power. It would not do to have such ability amongst the rank and file of his human-vampire army, for fear it might rise up and turn against him.

“Milord—?”

“What is it, Nasakenai?”

The ninja cleared his throat before bowing to his master. “Milord, I have failed you. I offer my life to you, for you to destroy as you see fit.”

“I can do that any time I want already, Nasakenai,” Morgan said with a smile. “But I appreciate the offer. No, you are too valuable to me, my friend. The eye—is it gone?”

“Yes, milord.”

“Then that is payment enough for your failure.”

“As you wish, milord.”

As Morgan watched his maimed lieutenant leave the room, he reflected on the frailty and treachery of mortal flesh. The mere thought that he had once been held hostage by the fear of disease and pestilence, was enough to fill him with disgust.

“I never realized how huge the house was before,” Fell whispered in awe as he counted the ninety-nine lightning rods that decorated the spires and turrets of Ghost Trap. “I mean, I knew it was big, but I never truly comprehended its scale.”

“Look, once we’re in there I want you to stick close to me, understand?” Sonja said earnestly. “This place was designed to confuse and trap the dead, and it also does a good job scrambling the synapses of anything more complicated than a worm. If regular humans have a hard time dealing with it, you can imagine what it’ll do to us. I still have the protective charm I used earlier, but I can’t guarantee it’ll extend itself to include you. Have I made myself clear?”

Fell swallowed hard and nodded. Sonja surprised herself by giving the boy a brief hug. Then she turned around and put her fist through one of the downstairs windows, reaching inside to open the lock.

“No wonder Morgan wouldn’t let us wander around,” Fell said in a low, reverential whisper as they entered Ghost Trap’s rambling confines. “You could get lost and never find your way out again!”

“That’s not the only thing you have to worry about,” Sonja warned him. “There are things that walk these halls. Most people would call them ghosts.”

“But ghosts can’t hurt you, can they?” he asked hopefully.

“Normally, no,” she replied. “But Ghost Trap is hardly what I’d call ‘normal’. Just keep a look-out for anything that looks like a little girl or a woman dressed in old-timey clothes.”

“Are they ghosts?”

“No, they’re fuckin’ tour hostesses!” she sighed in exasperation. “Of course they’re ghosts! But I’m pretty sure I can find my way back to the fire room without them—”

“The what?”

“Never mind. Just keep your mouth shut and your eyes open for ghosts, okay?” She suddenly halted and tilted her head. “You hear that?”

“Hear what? I don’t—” Fell’s jaw dropped open as the faint, but unmistakable sound of someone whimpering grew louder. Is that a ghost?”

Sonja shook her head. “The dead tend to be mute.” She motioned for him to follow her, moving stealthily through the shadows and dust of the empty rooms, following the source of the whimpering to a room down the hall.

A dropped flashlight lay in the middle of the room, throwing its beam against the nearest wall, which sparkled faintly in the dwindling light. Sonja reached out and touched the sandpaper-like wall covering, made of flecks of gold and crushed crystal. She then picked up the flashlight and turned its feeble beam on the person who had dropped it.

A balding, middle-aged man dressed in a dark, rumpled suit and wearing thick, blocky glasses was huddled in the far corner of the room, his face pressed against the wall. One side of his face was bloody from where he’d been rubbing it against the crystal-flecked wallpaper. He’d recently wet himself and twitched and whimpered like a kicked puppy.

“I recognize him,” Fell whispered. “He’s one of the Renfields. But what’s he doing in the outer house? Do you think he was looking for us?”

“I doubt it,” Sonja muttered. As she took another step towards the Renfield, he stopped shivering and bared his teeth, foam flecking the corners of his mouth. “Renfields aren’t terribly stable to begin with, so I’m not surprised this one’s completely lost it. Still, he might be of some use to us...”

Suddenly the Renfield shrieked and launched himself at Sonja, his fingers clawing at her glasses. She cursed and smashed the butt of the flashlight against his skull, dropping him like a pole axed steer. Sonja tossed aside the shattered flashlight and bent down, lifting the freshly-killed Renfield by his suit lapels.

“Waste not, want not,” she growled, sinking her canines into his still-warm throat. Once she was finished, she motioned for Fell to take her place: “Here. Drink.”

Fell’s eyes widened in horror. “No. I can’t.”

“You’re no virgin,” she reminded him. “You said so yourself. Drink—you’re going to need the energy.”

Fell meant to protest further, but he’d already caught the scent of blood. His mouth began to water. He quickly battened onto the dead man. Although the blood was already dropping below body temperature, it was enough to sustain him. By the time he had finished, the bruises covering his face had faded away to nothing.

“I know this sounds horrible,” he said as he let the drained corpse drop, “but I feel like I’ve got my second wind.”

“Good boy!” She grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. “Now, all we have to do is—”

A loud scream broke the silence, bouncing through the rooms like a rubber ball before being cut off in mid-note. Sonja and Fell exchanged looks and headed in the direction of the noise. They found a second Renfield in the hall Sonja recognized as the Fire Room. The gas jets were still blazing as they entered. The Renfield lay sprawled in the middle of the room, his skull smashed like an overripe pumpkin.

“This little girl and lady you mentioned—are they, uh, good ghosts or bad ghosts?”Fell asked nervously as Sonja tried to locate the secret panel.

“They’re ambivalent, like most dead,” she replied. “But if you’re asking if they killed our friend here, no, I don’t believe they’re responsible for this.”

“Then who—?”

“Found it!” Sonja crowed in triumph as the secret door pivoted open. “C’mon!”

Fell gave the mutilated remains a final glance over his shoulder before following Sonja into the secret passage.

The car Sonja and Fell had taken was parked on the south side of the house, its hood still warm. His own transport, a BMW he’d ‘borrowed’ back in San Francisco, was in no shape for a return journey. Steam seeped from under its hood, while something dark dripped from its undercarriage. Despite its claim to four wheel drive, it clearly had not been designed to navigate Sonoma County back roads at high speeds.

Now that he was here, all Palmer had to do was catch up with them. Spying an open ground-floor window, he checked to make sure his Luger was securely holstered before climbing over the sill.

Three steps into the Ghost Trap, he realized he’d made a big mistake. If he’d found the exterior of the mansion disorienting, it was nothing compared to the interior. He remembered how, as a child, he’d pestered his parents into allowing him to enter the House of Horrors at the state fair. He’d promised them that it wouldn’t give him nightmares, that he was too old to be scared. Finally, they’d weakened and allowed him to go inside. His previous self-assurance instantly vanished the minute the wooden double doors of the attraction swung shut behind him, cutting off all contact with the world where light, parents, and rational thought ruled. Surrounded by dry-ice mist, black lights and prerecorded screams and rattling chains, he’d shrieked at the sight of a department store mannequin dressed to look like Frankenstein. He’d been so scared he wet himself and had to be escorted outside by a pimply-faced teenager dressed in a hunchback costume. His father promptly called him a sissy, and they’d been forced to leave the fair early because of his “accident.” Now, thirty years later, the same paralyzing terror he’d experienced in the House of Horrors was close to claiming him again. His scalp prickled and his bladder ached as if full of ground glass.

He trudged through the oddly designed rooms; barely noticing in his disoriented confusion such oddities as doorways set three feet off the ground, windows that opened onto blank walls and fireplaces that served as staircases. With every room, he found it harder and harder to think straight. Why was he here? Why had he entered this horrible place? He knew he must have had a good reason to do so. Now if he could only remember what it was...

Palmer staggered as the floor abruptly dropped out from under him, the walls seeming to bow inwards as if made from rubber. He retched while leaning against a sharply canted doorway, the acid burning his throat. His dad was really going to yell at him now. He shouldn’t have eaten all those corndogs before riding the Tilt-A-Whirl. Now they were going to have to leave. But going home, at that moment, didn’t sound like such a bad idea. He had already been too long at the fair. Now if he could only remember where… the car was... parked…

He collapsed onto his hands and knees as dry heaves shook his body. His forebrain throbbed like a jazz drummer. I’m gonna die in here. The thought bubbled up suddenly from the murky confusion that filled his head. I’m gonna wander around lost inside this hellhole until it kills me. Just like it killed the man who built it...

He lifted his head and found himself staring at a small boy. The child looked to be no more than three years old and was dressed in an old-fashioned sailor’s suit, the type that was popular for children to wear at the turn of the last century. The child held a teddy bear in his left arm because his right one ended in a knob of bone and bloodless flesh protruding from his mangled shoulder. Although the child’s face was still round with baby fat, his eyes were solemn. It took Palmer a long moment to also realize that the child was transparent.

“Little boy...”

The child did not waver or disappear.

“Little boy... I need... help...”

A young girl clutching a china doll joined the boy, both of them watching Palmer with interest. The girl leaned toward her brother and muttered something that Palmer could not make out. Moving together, the children grasped Palmer by his arms and pulled him back onto his feet. He gasped and felt a strong chill run through his body at the touch of their tiny fingers on his flesh.

The children were in front of him now, motioning for him to follow. Shaken and weak, Palmer lurched after them. He had no way of knowing if these creatures were friend or foe, but anything was better than crawling around in circles in his own vomit.

Suddenly the children froze like fawns scenting the approach of a hunter. The boy and his sister disembodied, transforming themselves into fist-sized globs of light. The change was so abrupt it looked to Palmer as if the children had rolled up like window shades. Palmer pressed his hands to his eyes, even more disoriented than before. What had happened to his tiny spirit guides? Or had he imagined the whole thing? In any case, what was it that had frightened them away?

The scream ripped through him like a bullet, only to end abruptly, cut off in mid-shriek. The echo was so distorted it was impossible to tell if it had been a male or female voice.

Palmer weaved his wave in the general direction of the scream. His brain churned and stretched inside his head, pressing against the plates of his skull. Sonja. He had to find Sonja. That’s why he’d come into the House of Horrors. Once he found Sonja she’d make the pounding in his head go away and help him escape this terrible place.

Palmer stared at the thing with the ax for a long moment before realizing he’d discovered the source of the scream. The creature was shaped like a man, only taller, and carried a large, cruel-looking ax, which it was using to dismember what was left of a man in a dark suit. Palmer was not sure if the creature standing before him was flesh and blood or composed of ectoplasm, but it was evident the ax, at least, was solid enough to do its job.

The thing made weird tittering noises as it hacked away at its prey. The victim’s head had been cracked open from the top of his skull to his upper palate. As the thing halted in mid-swing and turned to look at the new intruder, Palmer’s bladder let go, just as it had in the House of Horrors, all those years ago. Only this time he knew there was no way he would be escorted to safety by a sympathetic teenager tricked out in monster drag.

The thing that stood before him had two heads. The head on the left was the larger of the pair, boasting a bat-like snout, a mouthful of jagged teeth, and pupil-less eyes the color of fresh blood. The head on the right was that of a man in his mid-thirties, the eyes brimming with a grief that extended beyond anything Palmer had ever seen. With a start, he recognized the face as that of Creighton Seward, Ghost Trap’s master architect.

The two-headed monster stepped forward, hoisting the ax that grew out of its left wrist in place of a hand. Palmer wanted to turn and flee the abomination before him, but he remained frozen, unable to move. He could see that Seward’s lips were moving; whether he was praying or arguing with its grotesque twin, was impossible to tell. As if in reply, the monster’s head sneered and emitted a string of high-pitched titters.

To Palmer’s surprise, Seward’s head suddenly turned and bit its neighbor on the cheek, ripping free a wad of flesh. The monster’s head gave a high-frequency wail that made Palmer’s nose bleed, and returned the attack in kind, scissoring off the ear nearest its mouth. Cowed, Seward’s head did not attempt any further interference.

The monster-head leered at Palmer and lifted its ax-hand on high, until it almost seemed to brush the ceiling. Palmer stared at the fiend advancing on him like a steer awaiting the butcher’s knife. Just as the ax was about to fall, a bright light appeared between Palmer and his would-be murderer. The monster balked, uncertainty crossing its hideous. Seward’s head suddenly seemed to rally and plunged the fingers of its right hand into the creature’s eyes. The thing shrieked even louder than before and Palmer felt blood begin to seep from his ears.

Suddenly the two-headed thing was gone, and in its place stood a woman dressed in clothing better suited to an Ibsen play.

“Oh, thank God! Lady? Lady, I need your help-”

The woman in the long skirt and high-collared blouse turned to face Palmer, her left eye swinging loose from its socket.

Palmer jumped to his feet and ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had to find his way out of the House of Horrors. He’d been too long at the fair. It was time to go home.

He bolted from the death-room and down a corridor lined with doors of varying shapes and sizes. Suddenly one of the doors opened outward and he heard something cut the air with a wicked slicing sound.

The last thing Palmer saw before the darkness claimed him was the word DUNLOP.

Chapter Twenty

“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” Sonja muttered as they stepped from the secret passage into the suite of rooms Fell had once called home.

“I never knew this doorway existed,” he marveled aloud. “I don’t think Morgan or the Renfields did, either.”

“It looks like it was created by the carpenters who worked on the house. It’s not on any of the blueprints. The building’s probably lousy with them.”

Fell picked up a paperback from its resting place on the table next to Anise’s old easy chair. He fanned the pages and put it back down. “It’s hard for me to believe that she’s really gone. I can still smell her…” He walked over to the fireplace and stared at the room’s reflection in the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the past in its depths. “Do you know what the last thing she said to me was?” he asked, nodding at the room in the looking glass. “She told me this was a cage. A prison. She was right, of course. I can see the bars now. But for a while, this was the happiest place on earth. I...” He shook his head, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Damn you, Sonja! Why did you have to come into our lives? Why did you force this knowledge on us?”

“I wish I could say I did it because truth is freedom, and living in ignorance is no different than living in slavery,” she admitted. “But that would be a lie. I did it because I wanted to hurt Morgan him where he’d feel it most. And because I wanted you for myself.”

Fell frowned. “Me?”

“You, Anise, the baby. I’ve been hungry for the company of my own kind for a long, long time. But I’m sterile, a mule; I can’t Make others like myself, like Morgan and the others can. Sometimes loneliness makes you do things that are selfish. I hope you can understand and can come to forgive me.”

“It doesn’t matter if your motives were selfish,” Fell replied. “What you said about living in ignorance and slavery is still the truth. It’s just that surrendering the dream isn’t easy, but now I know I don’t have to do it alone.”

“I know coming back here is painful for you, but we’ve got to dispatch Morgan as soon as possible. He’s here, somewhere in the house. I can feel him,” Sonja said, looking around the room warily.

Fell’s mouth pulled into a grimace. “I can feel him, too, like a phantom limb.”

She was here. He sensed her presence in his lair the way a spider monitors the strands of its web. How could he have slept, unaware, when first she walked these halls? How could he have remained insensate to anything so exquisitely deadly entering his domain?

At first he’d refused to believe the woman called Sonja could have been one of his by-blows. But now there was no denying it. His was the hand that had sown this dragon’s tooth. In a perverse way, he was proud of her. Even from such far remove, there was no mistaking her lethality. She was a thing of fatal beauty, to be feared and admired, like an unsheathed samurai sword. To know that he had created such a fearsome creature was flattering. Such a pity she must be destroyed.

The rogue’s signature was so powerful it took him a moment to realize that she had the breeder, Fell, was with her. Interesting. There also seemed to be something different to male dhampire’s psychic echo. A trace of free will, perhaps? Most interesting. If the breeders and their potential gets harbored potential similar to the rogue’s, then Howell’s sabotage had, in the end, had him a favor. What was the advantage to siring a new race of vampires to serve as his army, only to have them overthrow him?

Morgan rose from the chair in his study and opened an antique wardrobe with the blacked-out mirror. He wanted to look his best when he formally confronted his long-lost daughter and his errant son.

“Who are you? Are you one of Morgan’s lickspittle servants? Answer me! I didn’t hit you with the golf club that hard!”

Palmer opened his right eye, and then tried to open the left, only to find it swollen shut. He seemed to be lying on rough wooden floorboards.

“Wh-where am I?” he moaned as he struggled to sit up.

“Never mind where you are! Answer my question?” A balding man dressed in a grimy lab technician’s coat, a stethoscope looped around his neck like a pet boa constrictor, thrust a florid Palmer’s field of vision. His forehead bulged slightly, as if his forebrain was slightly too large for his skull, and his eyes, amplified by Coke-bottle thick glasses, regarded Palmer with a detached, almost reptilian interest. Despite his odd appearance, there was something familiar about the stranger Palmer could not quite place.

“I’m not a Renfield, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, cradling his bleeding head.

The moon-faced stranger grunted in distaste and swiftly shoved his hand inside Palmer’s trench coat, removing his wallet and scanning the identification inside. His eyebrows raised themselves upon the sight of the Private Investigator’s license.

“Hey! Whattaya think you’re doing?” Palmer reached for his Luger, only to find the holster empty.

“Looking for this?” The moon-faced man extracted Palmer’s gun from the pocket of his lab coat. “I might not be a private detective, Mr. William Calumet Palmer, but I know enough to disarm a potential enemy once I’ve knocked him unconscious.” He snorted and tossed the wallet into Palmer’s lap.

“I’d rather you not include the ‘Calumet’ part, whoever you are,” Palmer groaned as he looked around the room, which was cramped and filled with metal tables littered with glass beakers and Bunsen burners. “I told you who I am, now return the favor. And why did you smack me in the head with a golf club?”

“I am Dr. Brainerd Howell, late of his diabolical majesty Lord Morgan’s service.” The scientist said, bowing at the waist with the heel-clicking propriety of a Prussian nobleman. “Forgive me for introducing myself in such a fashion, but I had no way of knowing you weren’t one of Morgan’s minions.”

Suddenly Palmer realized where he’d seen Howell’s face before. “You’re the one I saw looking out the window the when I was surveying the house!”

“Not impossible, I grant you. But why are you here, Mr. Palmer? This is hardly a place for sightseeing.”

“I’m trying to find someone.”

“Indeed.” Howell’s smile widened as his eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t happen to be searching for the young woman who entered the house earlier? The one with the sunglasses?”

“How did you know about her?”

“There’s precious little that goes on in Ghost Trap that I don’t know about,” Howell sniffed. “I daresay I have a better understanding of its secrets than its supposed master.”

Palmer groaned as he got to his feet. Howell watched him cautiously but did not try to stop him or threaten him with the gun. As the private investigator straightened up, he spotted a ten-gallon jar full of a clear liquid, in which was suspended a monster-fetus identical to the one Anise had given birth to, its umbilical cord attached to a pulpy yolk sac.

“Holy Christ!”

“Ah! I see you’ve noticed my little friend. How do you like him, hmmm?” Howell leaned forward, eyeing the monstrosity in the glass jar with something resembling affection. “It was the prototype for a parasite-clone I succeeded in implanting in his precious broodmare’s unhallowed womb.” Howell removed a syringe from one of his pockets and tapped the side of the jar. The fetus opened its eyes, revealing the cold, needful stare of an insect. The sight of Howell’s face, distorted by the glass and the synthetic amniotic fluids that sustained it, caused the fetus to extend its hideous tube-like mouth. Howell chuckled indulgently. “How cute! It thinks it’s feeding time!”

“You’re responsible for that... that thing Anise gave birth to?” Palmer asked, unable to hide the revulsion in his voice.

Howell gave Palmer a sharp glance. “You saw it?”

“You could say that,” Palmer grimaced, rubbing his calf.

“Yes, I created it. I bioengineered the creature from the breeders’ own sperm and ovum, so there would be little chance of rejection, then implanted it in Anise during a prenatal exam. I performed the operation under Morgan’s very nose! He may be wise in the ways of the supernatural world, but when it comes to science, he might as well be a potato-munching peasant, fearful of the shaman’s magic!” Howell said with a rueful sneer. “The parasite was supposed to devour the original fetus and take its place. It was the best I could do to try and make amends for betraying mankind. However, during Anise’s last prenatal checkup, I detected two heartbeats.” He leaned forward, eyeing Palmer intently. “You were there at the birth. The child is dead, is it not?”

“Yes,” Palmer lied.

Howell smiled grimly. “Good! The extinction of the human race has been averted—for now. Morgan—the preening fool—had no idea of what he was unleashing on his world, as well as ours.”

“How so?”

“Morgan’s breeders can only reproduce with others of their kind, which are— mercifully—rare. But the child—the child would possess the ability to mate with humans and still breed true.”

“And your changeling was an improvement?”

“The creature you saw was designed so that it would have no means of eliminating waste products, once severed from the umbilical cord. The pathetic little monster was destined to die of uremia within a day or so of its birth.”

As he listened to Dr. Howell rattle on, Palmer shook his head in an attempt to clear the ringing in his ears. The scientist clucked his tongue in reproach. “I wouldn’t bother trying to get a better grip on your senses if I were you. It won’t do you any good. This room—my ‘secret laboratory’ if you will—is located in Ghost Trap’s attic, at an intersection of several architectural impossibilities. The barriers separating the space-time continuum are very thin here, weighting the probability factors for my experiments in my favor. Morgan and his loathsome Renfields shun the outer house, but I find it helps me think. This is where I do all my plotting against Morgan.”

“Fell said that you had been kidnapped, is that true?”

“In its way,” Howell replied with a shrug. “I came here of my own free will, but when I realized what I was mixed up with, I discovered I could no longer leave. I’ve been trapped here for years, just like the ghosts you saw wandering about the lower floors. I mean to see the undead bastard broken and ground to paste, just like as he destroyed my career. And best of all, I’ve managed to do it under his very nose without him suspecting a thing. He and his despicable little skull-peepers find my thoughts opaque, you see,” the geneticist laughed, tapping his over-sized cranium. “I confuse them by thinking in terms of formulae, and riding the white tiger. Surrounded by a nest of telepaths, I have succeeded in keeping my thoughts to myself for over five years!”

“But why were you working for him in the first place?”

“I am Dr. Brainerd Howell. Does the name mean anything to you?”

“Uh, well, I...”

“Well, does it?”

“No,” he admitted.

“And why should it?!” Howell said angrily. “For years I’ve been kept locked away from my fellow scientists, unable to communicate my discoveries as I struggled to discover a means of scientifically replicating the effects of a vampire’s bite on a human. I have succeeded in working the darkest of miracles, melding the world of science with the world of the paranormal—and there is no one to see it! No one to nominate me for a Nobel prize! No one to make sure my name goes down in the history books along with Pasteur! Einstein! Salk!”

“You left out Frankenstein, Mengele and Benway,” Palmer added.

“Don’t get smart with me!” Howell snapped, his pupils contracted down into pinpricks as he jabbed a finger in Palmer’s face. “I could stick you with a hypo full of miracle juice that would make your amino acids square dance. ‘Swing your partner! Do-si-do! He’s got three eyes and no more nose!’ How’d you like that, Mr. Mr. Private Detective?”

“Calm down, Doc! I didn’t mean anything by it! Honest!”

“It took five hundred experimental subjects before I finally perfected the serum that produced Anise and Fell. Even then, the failure rate was eighty percent.”

“You sound real calm about that.”

“Do I?” Howell sighed, rolling up the sleeve of his coat, exposing a pale, surprisingly hairy arm. The inside of his left elbow looked like a pincushion. He took a small plastic bag of white powder from his breast pocket and mixed it with distilled water in a beaker suspended over a flickering Bunsen burner. “Appearances can be deceiving, Mr. Palmer,” he murmured as he wrapped a length of rubber tubing above his elbow. “Very much so.”

Sonja scanned the main floor only to have it come up empty of Renfield activity. By her count, all but one of the psychics had been disposed of, one way or another. That left Nasakenai, the one Fell claimed was Morgan’s heavy gun. High-caliber Renfields weren’t easy to come by, and Morgan sure as hell wouldn’t waste one by marching him into a meat grinder like the Ghost Trap.

She glanced over her shoulder at Fell, who drifted behind her, staring at the sections of the house he had never been allowed to enter. Outside of the three interconnected rooms that had served as Anise and Fell’s bridal suite, the main floor so far seemed to consist of a retrofitted country kitchen, several large, disused parlors full of dusty Victorian love seats and moth-eaten taxidermy foxes, and what had once been a conservatory before the glass window panes had been bricked in.

As they reached the foot of the staircase that led to the second and third floors, Sonja paused to lean on the banister, peering up into the shadows of the next landing. “Do you have any idea what’s up there?” she asked.

Fell nodded. “Dr. Howell’s laboratory and Morgan’s library study are on the second floor. I’m not sure what else is up there. The Renfields kept their quarters on the third floor…” He frowned and fell silent, as if listening to distant music. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Someone just called my name. It sounded like…” He shook his head. “No, that’s impossible.” He started a second time. “There it goes again!”

Sonja scowled and shook her head. “Kid, I don’t hear a damned thing.”

“Oh my God, it’s her!” Fell gasped, trembling like a foal. “It’s Anise!”

“Kid! Listen me to me!” Sonja said, grabbing his arm. “It’s a trick! Anise is dead! s Morgan’s playing a trick on you!”

“You don’t know that!” Fell retorted, jerking himself free of her grip. “You said so yourself that she was alive when you left the motel! How do you know she’s dead? Were you there? Did you see her die?”

“No, but-”

“Then how can you be so sure she’s dead?” He turned and looked toward the darkness at the top of the stairs. “Anise! Is that you, darling?” he called out. He smiled and turned Sonja, a jubilant smile on his face. “You heard her that time, didn’t you?” he asked excitedly. “She’s alive, Sonja! Alive!”

As he began to head up the stairs, Sonja reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, doing her best to hold him back. “Fell, no! Don’t!” she begged. “That’s not Anise you’re hearing! It can’t be!”

Fell spun about, fangs bared and eyes glinting red, and punched her in the jaw. She counted ten risers before the back of her head made contact with the flagstones at the foot of the stairs, turning everything black.

“Anise? Anise, where are you?” Fell called out. When she answered, her voice was so close it was as if she was whispering in his ear.

I’m upstairs, dearest. Waiting for you.

“Are you all right?” Fell asked anxiously as he climbed the stairs that separated him from his love. “Sonja said you were dead. So did Morgan.”

I’m fine, sweet one. I’ve missed you so! I’m sorry about all those nasty things I said the last time we were together! I just wasn’t myself. That evil woman filled my head with all kinds of horrid nonsense. I was such a naughty girl to believe her!

Fell stood at the top of the second-floor stairs, looking around for some sign of her. “Where are you, darling?”

In the library, silly. Where else?

As she spoke the words in his head, the door to Morgan’s study swung open.

“Is it safe?” he asked nervously.

We have nothing to fear from him, Fell. He’s leaving us alone. We’ll never have to worry about him again.

Fell didn’t bother to question his luck. It was enough that his lover had returned to him and Morgan had fled. He hurried into the darkened library.

“Anise?”

She was standing in front of library’s huge fireplace, watching him with a coy, teasing smile on her lips. Her figure had returned to the trim proportions it had possessed before the pregnancy. She was beautiful and sexy and, best of all, she was alive. Anise held out her arms to him and Fell threw himself into her embrace.

“Thank God, it wasn’t true!” he exclaimed. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” But as he stepped back to feast his eyes on his beloved’s face, he found Nasakenai, the right half of his head swaddled in fresh bandages, returning his gaze. He backed away from the smirking Renfield, shaking his head in denial. “No! She’s alive! I heard her call my name!”

“You heard what you wanted to hear,” Morgan said. “You are still human in that regard!”

Fell turned to stare at the figure seated at the massive desk. Morgan, dressed in immaculate evening wear, leaned forward, resting his chin on his steepled fingers as he smiled at his former patient. “Behold, the errant son returns! Welcome home, my dear boy.”

“Fuck you, ‘Father’!” Fell snarled.

The vampire lord lifted an elegantly arched eyebrow as he clucked his tongue. “I see you’ve been exposed to the same corrosive influence as poor Anise. One night away from home and you’re already falling in with a bad crowd.”

“You used me, Morgan!” Fell said angrily. “I came to you for help and you fuckin’ used me as a guinea pig! You looked inside me and took out things that had no right being outside my head so I would fit into your Dracula über alles ego trip!”

Morgan tilted back in his chair, studying Fell with a detached interest, just like he used to during their therapy sessions.

Sonja had warned Fell about going up alone against the vampire lord, but the hate he felt for Morgan swelled inside him like a storm. It felt like he’d downed an amphetamine cocktail with an adrenalin chaser. He was immortal and invulnerable, a child of the night to be feared by all that dared cross his path.

“No one fucks with me and gets away with it! I’m going to flay you alive, old man!” he snarled, thrusting out his chin in defiance.

“Go ahead and take your best shot,” Morgan said as he stepped out from behind the desk in one smooth, seamless motion, his arms held away from his sides. “Be my guest.”

Fell snatched up an obsidian letter opener lying on the desk and moved forward, ready to plunge the knife into the vampire’s eyes. As he lifted the blade, his eyes met Morgan’s and the room began to spin around as if it had suddenly become a centrifuge. He cried out in pain as an unseen hand forced his fingers to peel away from the hilt of the letter opener. The obsidian knife dropped to the carpet at Fell’s feet with a muffled thud.

“What’s the matter, Fell? Got a cramp?”Morgan chuckled darkly.

The younger vampire snarled and averted his eyes from his Maker’s taunting smirk.

“Look at me when I speak to you, boy!” the vampire lord snarled. “I said look at me!”

Fell cried out as invisible fingers yanked at his neck, forcing him to meet Morgan’s wine-dark gaze.

“Now show me whose boss,” he sneered.

Fell promptly dropped to the floor as if hamstringed, laying on his back, belly exposed, like a cub submitting to the dominant male in a wolf pack. A thin, nasal whine escaped his constricted throat as he pissed himself.

“Ah, the recklessness of youth!” Morgan proclaimed as he knelt beside Fell’s writhing body, caressing his hairless cheek with the ball of his thumb. “Ready to snap the leash and bound, unhindered, into the world! Is that what you want, child? Freedom?”

Fell tried to answer, but all that came from his mouth was a bubble of bloody froth.

“Yes, I can see it in your eyes. You’re still human enough to believe in such garbage, I fear. And it’s contaminated you beyond redemption.” Morgan said sadly. “What is freedom but the chance to die at the hands of those who fear you? If you went to the zoo and threw open the door of the tiger’s cage, would it leap free of its prison and run wild in the streets, snacking on infants snatched from their strollers, or would it simply yawn and go back to sleep, the concept of freedom meaningless to it?” Morgan leaned forward and kissed Fell’s sweaty brow gently, like a father bidding his young son good night. “You should have stayed in the cage, Fell,” he murmured. “You are no longer of use to me. Pity. You showed such promise in therapy.”

Morgan picked up the letter opener Fell had dropped, running his thumb down the length of its obsidian blade, watching the blood boil forth like brackish water. His thumb sealed itself before the thick, foul smelling liquid had time to stain the carpet.

“Give me your hand.” The command was quiet, almost gentle.

Fell gritted his teeth and tried to keep from obeying. Although his muscles groaned like rotten mooring ropes, in the end there was no escaping the vampire lord’s will. Morgan placed the letter opener in Fell’s rigid, trembling hand, and then wrapped his fingers around its hilt.

“You know what to do,” he whispered.

Fell ground his teeth, heedless of the blood filling his mouth as his fangs shredded his lower lip. He tried to twist his head away from the slowly approaching blade, but it was no use. His body was no longer his to control. He tried screamed, but all that escaped his paralyzed larynx was a high-pitched whine. As the point of the letter opener punctured his right eye like an overripe grape, he managed a short, muffled shout of pain. Then, to his horror, his other hand rose of its own volition and took the weapon from his bloodstained right hand and plunged it into his remaining eye, plunging him into total darkness. Then he felt the sharp edge of the blade begin to saw into his exposed throat. He continued trying to scream even after he’d severed his own larynx.

As he felt death close about him, Fell’s thoughts turned one last time to those he had loved most: his parents, his sister, Anise, and his daughter.

“What is this?” Suddenly Morgan was straddling his body, slapping the letter opener from Fell’s grip. “There is a child?” He grabbed Fell by his bloodied shirt front, trying not to shake him so hard his head finally fell off. “The bitch tricked me! The child isn’t dead! Tell me where! Tell me!”

Fell opened his mouth, but all that came out was a large, black bubble of blood. He could feel Morgan rooting inside his dying brain, searching for the memories concerning the baby’s whereabouts. Blind and partially paralyzed, it was like being alone in a dark house with a rabid, hungry animal.

“Tell me where it is, breeder, or I swear I’ll keep you alive like this forever!” Morgan spat.

Fell knew he had waltzed into Morgan’s trap like the world’s biggest fool. He’d gotten a taste of being superhuman and it had made him reckless, and now he was paying for his carelessness. He was dying, but he’d be doubly damned if he’d betray his daughter to this monster. But he also knew Morgan was stronger than him, both physically and mentally, and accustomed to getting what he wanted. So he grabbed a fistful of his own hair and give it one good, final yank.

Morgan yowled in rage as Fell’s head came free of its body, rolling onto the Persian carpet. He let go of the body, kicking it a few times in frustration. Nasakenai stood off to the side, watched his master nervously.

“Send the pyrotic after Howell!” he commanded. “Once I’m done with the good doctor, it can use his body as its new host.”

“Very well, milord,” Nasakenai said, bowing in acknowledgement. “And what of the rogue?”

“She’s mine.”

Sonja sat up and rubbed the back of her head. Her fingers came away sticky. She grunted and wiped her hand on her jacket. Fell was stronger than she’d suspected.

She got to her feet, leaning heavily on the banister. Bouquets of fireworks exploded behind her eyelids. Had she been human, the fall she’d just taken would have killed her. She had to find Fell. Make sure he was all right. What did the young fool think he was doing, running off like that?

“Fell!” Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, like that of an old woman. “Where are you?”

She fell silent upon hearing a footfall at the top of the landing. She looked up and saw Fell lurch into sight, his tread heavy and unsteady. His clothes were so coated with blood it looked as if someone had doused him with a five-gallon can of paint. In his stiffening right arm he held his own severed, eyeless head by its long, yellow hair.

Fell’s dead fingers spasmed as his animated corpse went limp and collapsed upon the upper landing, sending his head bouncing down the stairs, until it came to rest at Sonja’s feet, staring up at her with its ruined sockets.

From the darkness on the second floor came the sound of laughter. She knew that laugh. She’d last heard it in London, back when she was human.

“I’m coming for you, bastard!” she whispered under her breath, her hand closing about switchblade in her pocket.

She is here, and my hands shake in anticipation. Her aura precedes her, lighting her way like foxfire. That I could have succeeded by accident where my carefully laid plans failed so horribly is both fascinating and humbling. I must destroy this, my most magnificent creation, for her very existence is a threat to my continuance. Yet I cannot help but stand in awe of her—worship her, as Pygmalion adored his Galatea. She is here, and my hands burn for her blood.

Palmer pressed his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the things eeling in and out of his field of vision. They looked something like centipedes, except that they were transparent and swam about in midair. If Howell saw them, he didn’t seem to mind; he was too busy checking his syringe for air bubbles to worry about the extra-dimensional creatures in the rafters.

“Look, Doc—if you want to get away from Morgan, I’m sure my friend Sonja will be more than happy to help you out...”

“My dear Mr. Palmer,” Howell sighed around the hypodermic he held clenched between his teeth as he slapped the inside of his elbow with his index and middle fingers in hopes of raising a vein. “I have spent over five years in the grip of one vampire. What makes you think I’d want to hand myself over to yet another one?”

“Sonja’s nothing like Morgan,” Palmer hastened to assure him.

“And rattlesnakes are nothing like Gila monsters,” Howell replied as he deftly jabbed the loaded hypo into his arm. Watching Howell shoot up made Palmer want a cigarette. He winced and averted his gaze.

Howell smiled wryly. “Go ahead and look away. I don’t mind. Mainlining isn’t a pretty sight, not even to junkies. You could jump me right now. Why don’t you?”

Palmer shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered. It was the truth.

Howell quickly untied the rubber tubing and flexed his elbow a few times. He turned to face Palmer, his eyes dilating as the heroin rushed through his bloodstream. It suddenly occurred to Palmer that, despite his aged appearance, Howell was only a couple of years older than himself.

I’m not proud of the things I have done in Morgan’s service. But it’s too late to pretend they didn’t happen or that I had no choice in the matter,” Howell said as he removed the Luger from his pocket. Palmer tensed. The guy was a loon and a junkie to boot. There was no telling what he might decide to do. “I must admit that the work challenged me, unlike anything else I’ve ever encountered. I dug my grave years ago, Mr. Palmer. I am a dead man. The only question is when my heart will stop beating,” he handed the pistol back to Palmer, butt first. “I do not expect to live terribly much longer. In fact, I’d be surprised if I survive to see the dawn. But I warn you, do not trust your champion simply because she is a woman. The females are even worse than the males.”

“Sonja’s different—she’s not like the others.” He knew what he was saying sounded stupid, even deluded, but it was the truth. How could he hope to explain it to someone like Howell?

“You love her.” The scientist’s voice was flat, almost dead, reminding Palmer of Chaz’s equally lifeless pronouncement.

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He was surprised to hear himself admitting it out loud.

“Renfields always love their masters,” Howell said, his head beginning to nod. “That’s what makes them so loyal.” The scientist frowned and sniffed the air. “Is it my imagination, or do you smell barbecue?”

Chapter Twenty-One

Sonja followed the trail of blood down the hallway, to where she knew Morgan was patiently awaiting her arrival. Although she could not see or hear him, she could feel him the same way a conjoined twin senses its sibling’s moods and health. It was a dreadful, unwanted intimacy, and it made her want to retch.

As she approached the library, the door swung open of its own volition, and a strange, flickering light the color of a ripe bruise spilled out into the corridor.

“Welcome, my child.” The voice was familiar, although it lacked the upper-class British accent it had possessed when she’d first heard it, decades ago. She took a hesitant step into the purple-black light, shielding herself as best as she could from the siren song of his personality

Morgan stood in front of a mammoth fireplace, dressed in bespoke evening wear. dinner jacket and matching pants and immaculately groomed. He flashed her a welcoming smile, as if he was genuinely glad to see her.

“Come forward, child, so I may look at you,” he said, studying her over the top of his tinted aviator glasses.

Don’t be fooled by what you see of him on the surface, the Other hissed from its place coiled within her. Look beyond the illusion. See him for what he truly is!

Sonja’s vision flickered as she shifted into the Pretender spectrum. The Morgan standing before her warped and twisted like a piece of cellophane held too close to a light bulb, his flesh losing its sun worshipper’s glow until it resembled tallow. His fingernails grew long and curled, like those of an ancient Mandarin, while cellular decay bloated his features. The smell that radiated from him reminded her of the dead mouse she’d once found lodged in an old sofa bed. The very thought of this putrescent monstrosity thrusting his rancid member into her was enough to make her gorge rise.

As much as she longed to gouge out Morgan’s eyes and use his head as a bowling ball, she had to control the rage boiling inside her. Although she had made her hate for the monster that raped and tortured her all those years ago a part of her day-to-day existence, this was not the time to indulge her loathing. She knew all too well the immensity of her rage, as well as what it could do once unleashed. She swore she would never allow herself to lose control again, like she did when she confronted Catherine Wheele; the lives she’d destroyed and the souls she’d shattered that night would haunt her to the grave and beyond.

“Should I say ‘so, we meet at last,’ and get the clichés out of the way?” Morgan suggested his handsome, debonair visage once more securely in place.

“Do you recognize me” She had to fight to keep the tremor from her voice as she asked the question.

Morgan’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “Do you have any idea how many hapless, silly girls I have seduced over the last six hundred years, my dear? Do you truly expect me to remember one out of that multitude?”

“Denise Thorne. London. 1969.”

“Ah, yes! The heiress! You were actually missed, if I recall. That was careless of me. Though not as careless as not making sure I snapped your neck before tossing you out of the car. It was such a happy-go-lucky, irresponsible era! I blame the zeitgeist for my sloppiness.”

“I’ve been hunting for you for a very long time, Morgan.”

The vampire lord sighed and studied his fingernails. “I suppose you want to kill me, or something equally tedious. Tell me, child, what exactly would my demise prove?”

“That I’m not like you.”

“Indeed?” Morgan smirked, raising an eyebrow in amusement. “If you are different from me, how have you managed to survive these past few decades, little one? How have you kept yourself fed?”

“I have my ways.”

“Black market bottled blood no doubt. But that can not be all you’ve dined on. I know how bland prepackaged blood can be. Have you killed? Answer me true, child—I’ll know if you lie. I can feel your pulse racing even now.”

“Yes,” she replied grudgingly. “I have killed.”

Morgan’s smile was slow and sly. “How many have you taken down? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “And it doesn’t matter.”

“Ha!” Morgan sneered. “And you claim you’re nothing like me!”

“I am not one of you!” Sonja snapped.

“That is true,” he conceded. “You’re not a vampire, as the human like to call us. But neither are you the same as your dear, departed siblings. If only Fell and Anise had turned out half as well as you! But, perhaps, that is what I get for choosing such flawed vessels to begin with. Still, it’s a shame to destroy something as... unique as yourself. But some things simply can’t be helped. ”

He was inside her head, fast as a striking cobra, his will crashing against her own, like a wave breaking on a high cliff. With a concentrated shove, she ejected him from her mind like she would spit out a broken tooth.

“Very impressive. Your will is very strong for one so young,” Morgan asked as he watched her from behind his tinted shades. “We are more alike than you would like to believe. There are better ways for a father and daughter to resolve their differences.”

“You’re not my father!” Sonja snarled as she wiped at the blood trickling from her nose.

“Ah, but I Made you in my image, child! You are bonded far tighter to me than any parent. Although you fight it, you have more in common with me than either Anise or Fell. They were weak, flawed vessels, unworthy of the gift I gave them. In the end, they could not surrender their humanity, and it cost them everything.” Morgan held up his left hand, dragging the nail of his right thumb across his palm. A black, polluted liquid gushed forth. “Honor thy father, Sonja! Look into yourself and find me there—in the blood!”

She felt the relentless pressure of his will bearing down on her as if she’d been suddenly transported to the bottom of the ocean floor. She dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around her abdomen. Blackish-purple solar systems went nova behind her eyes. The temptation to capitulate was intense. It would be so easy to simply surrender and allow him to fill the void inside her.

Morgan moved closer, his voice that of a punishing parent. “Believe me, I don’t enjoy doing this. You are beautiful. I like beautiful things.” His handsome, male model features shivered, revealing worm-eaten ruin. “You are also very, very dangerous. I like that, too. I see elements of my younger self in you: angry, volatile, defiant. I find this similarity... arousing.” He leered at her, gesturing with a corpse-like hand to the knot in his pants. “Humans are always prattling on about love. I know nothing of that. But I do know of hunger…need…want. And you have awakened a dark fascination in me, Sonja. It is the same allure that draws a moth to the flame. I cannot allow this hunger to grow, for it imperils my continuance.” He lifted a hand smelling of graveyard mold and touched her cheek. His skin felt dead and cold against her own. “But, still, I can not help but be attracted to you.”

Sonja closed her eyes and saw a young girl, naked and bleeding, struggling to wriggle free of the red-eyed demon pinning her to the back seat of a car. She heard the girl’s screams as he emptied himself into her, and how he laughed as her pulse fluttered and dimmed beneath his cold, cold hands.

You’ve been living just to kill this bastard for decades for what he did to you! The Other’s dark voice snarled inside her head. And look at you! Cringing like a whipped dog offering up its throat! Let me out! Let me out, woman, before he kills us all!

“You’re trembling...” Morgan’s voice was close to her ear, his breath billowing forth in a mildewed cloud. “Are you as excited as I am?”

“Don’t touch me!” Suddenly she was free and the switchblade was in her hand. She swiped blindly in his direction, only to have Morgan kick the weapon out of her hand.

“How dare you use silver against me?” he snarled, clearly unnerved by her ability to break free of his control.

“I’m not one of your pedigreed lap dogs, Morgan,” Sonja replied defiantly. “I’m not to roll over and die simply because you tell me to! I was born in the gutter and raised on the street—and this bitch ain’t afraid to bite!”

“I was toying with the idea of breaking your will and allowing you to continue as one of my harem,” Morgan hissed angrily. “But I see now you’re too dangerous to keep, even as a pet!” His voice dropped, becoming an inhuman growl as he threw wide his arms, his eyes rolling back in its socket.

Sonja recognized the ritual stance used by Nobles in psychic combat, and followed suit, falling inside herself in time to meet Morgan on a field of battle known only as the Place Between Places.

There was darkness and light. There was up and down in all directions. Morgan’s imago hung suspended in the nothingness, its features unmarred, dressed in the silk and samite of a medieval prince. His eyes burned like polished garnet and flames licked from between his lips. His hands cupped balls of black energy that smoldered like a malignant St. Elmo’s Fire.

“Is that the best you can do, rogue?” he sneered contemptuously, motioning to his opponent’s self-image.

Sonja looked down at herself. Save for her leather jacket looking brand-new, there was no appreciable difference between her imago and her physical self.

“What difference does it make?” she replied with a shrug. “We’re all naked inside our heads.”

In reply, a tiger with three heads and the tail of a scorpion jumped out of Morgan’s chest. Sparks flew from its gnashing teeth as its heads roared in unison. It pounced, knocking Sonja onto her back. As the chimera’s fangs closed on its victim’s face, the Other began to laugh.

Howell and Palmer stared at the lock on the door to the secret laboratory began to glow, quickly going from bright red to white-hot within a matter of seconds. The odor of roasting flesh was overpowering.

“Is there another way out of here?” Palmer asked anxiously.

The scientist nodded. “There’s a trapdoor that leads directly to the nucleus.” He pointed to floor under the dissection table.

“What are we waiting for?” Palmer yelped, grabbing Dr. Howell by the arm. “If that’s what I think it is on the other side of that door, you don’t want to be here to tell it hello!”

To his surprise, Howell yanked his arm free of his grip. “I already told you I’m a dead man, Mr. Palmer!” he explained. “I’m better off dying at the hands of Morgan’s servants than falling back into his clutches.”

Before Palmer could argue any further, the door flew open, its lock and handle reduced to warm taffy. The pyrotic stepped into the room, sizzling in its own fat. Palmer dove under the dissection table and peered down the trapdoor. All he could see was a rickety ladder disappearing into the darkness below. Hardly the stairway to heaven, but it would do. If the scientist wanted to purge his sins in a one-sided battle with the burning man sent to fetch him, more power to him.

“So, the Renfields sent you in their stead, eh, Hot Stuff?” Howell said with a humorless laugh as he picked up a large, wickedly curved knife from the tray of instruments next to the dissecting table. “Well, I’m not going back! You’re going to have to kill me!”

As the blind pyrotic moved toward Howell, smoke rising from its ears and nostrils like steam from a kettle, its arm struck jar containing the unborn changeling. There was the sound of glass breaking, followed by Howell screaming unintelligible obscenities.

The monstrous fetus struck the floor of the attic, mewling piteously as it flopped about helplessly like a landed baby shark. As Palmer disappeared down the trapdoor, the last thing he saw was Dr. Howell drive the blade he was holding into the pyrotic’s stomach, slitting it from crotch to throat as easily as he might carve a roasted turkey. The pyrotic opened its mouth to scream, but all that came out was the hiss of live steam a sinuous serpent-shape made of smoke and fire, like the bearded dragons wrapped about Chinatown’s luck gate, uncoiled from the its slit gullet, consuming the hapless scientist in a wall of living flame.

The chimera squatted atop her chest, its stinger dripping poison as its triple set of jaws gnashed and snarled. Suddenly its threatening roars quickly turned into yelps of confusion and fear as the beast began to sink into its would-be victim, as if sucked into quicksand. As she got to her feet, the chimera’s oversized scorpion’s tail was still whipping madly about as it was absorbed into her torso. Her eyelids fluttered as she consumed the avatar, making its dark energy her own.

She lashed out at her attacker in retaliation, striking out with her will as if it was a bullwhip. There was a sound like the sonic boom of a low-flying jet, as pearls of blood began to appear on Morgan’s brow in place of sweat. In response, something that looked like an ape with long, spidery arms and fungus-gray fur, pulled itself free of his torso. With a high-pitched squeal, the avatar launched itself at her, sinking its claws into her face, only to emit an ultrasonic shriek as first its wrist, then its elbow, disappeared into her imago.

Realizing it was in danger of being absorbed, the avatar screeched and jettisoned its right arm before leaping free. Clutching the stump of its right shoulder, the beast loped back to Morgan, where it cowered at his feet.

“I knew you were powerful, but I had no idea you possessed such will!” Morgan scowled as he gathered the wounded avatar back into himself. “It has been a long time since I’ve been challenged this way. I’m still going to kill you, of course. But I appreciate the exercise.”

A tentacle burst from Morgan’s chest, whipping about his head like a rodeo star’s trick lariat. Two more emerged from his sides, quickly wrapping themselves around Sonja’s arms and legs, binding them to her body. Morgan laughed as the final tentacle dropped about her neck like a hangman’s noose. She hissed as the coils tightened, only to have it grow into a yowl of agony as thousands of tiny needle-filled mouths began working at her dream-flesh…

And suddenly she was no longer in the Place Between Places, but back in the waking world. She was lying on the Persian rug on the library floor, curled into a fetal ball at Morgan’s feet. Or was she? She was unsure if she was truly awake or merely dreaming that she was, as she could still feel the hideous mouths lining the tentacles that bound her imago tearing at her psyche. She looked up and saw Morgan squatting over her like a gargoyle perched on the cornice of a cathedral. His eyes were rolled so far back in his head he looked like a marble statue.

The Other’s voice abruptly sounded in her inner ear, seeming far more frightened than she’d ever heard it before. Don’t just lay there snorting dust bunnies! Kill him! Kill him before he realizes he’s fighting me instead of you!

Sonja blinked in surprise as she realized what the Other meant. She had to move fast and strike at Morgan’s physical body before he realized he was being tag-teamed. Her fingers were cold and numb as she fumbled in her pockets for her switchblade, only to find them empty. Then she remembered the vampire lord had kicked it out of her hand. But where had it landed—?

As she frantically searched the room, she finally spied the switchblade lying in the hearth, inches from the roaring fire. Marshaling all her strength, she forced herself to crawl in the direction of the fireplace. Although Morgan’s control over her physical self had disappeared, it still felt as if the marrow in her bones had been replaced with lead as she slowly, painfully, inched her way toward the knife.

In the Place Between Places, Morgan tightened his grip on his enemy’s imago. Although the flesh and bone he was grinding into paste was illusory, the pain it generated was very, very real.

“Do you know what happens to a body once its imago is destroyed, little one?” he asked as he lifted her over his head. “It’s like performing a lobotomy on the soul.”

“Like I have one to destroy!” she snarled, spitting a streamer of blood into his right eye. Suddenly pain the color of an exploding sun filled her senses as the mouths lining the tentacles began to feed in earnest. The more she struggled, the tighter the coils grew, but it was not in her nature to surrender, so the agony continued to escalate.

Morgan drew this captive enemy toward him, tilting her so that she dangled inches from his face. “You are so exquisitely lethal, my dear! I know you do not believe me, but I will mourn you, in my way. Had things been different between us, I would have made you my queen. We could have spent the coming centuries happily grinding our enemies beneath our heels. But there is no point regretting something that can never be. I promise I will make it quick if you tell me where you’ve hidden the breeder’s get.”

“Screw you.”

The tentacles knotted themselves even tighter, grinding her internal organs to jelly paste. Blood began to ooze from her nostrils, tear ducts, and ears.

“Tell me where the child is! It belongs to me! I am entitled to the fruit of my endeavor!”

“Why? So you can build a race of living vampires?” she sneered. “You don’t even know what you’ve created, do you? Anise’s child isn’t a vampire, you stupid fucker!”

“What is it, then?” he snapped.

“It’s a seraph!”

“You lie!” Morgan thundered, slamming her against a nothingness that was somehow as hard as concrete.

“You should see your face!” she laughed between fits of choking on her own blood. “What’s the matter, dead boy? Soil your pants?”

“Shut up!”

“Make me!”

“Damn you, Sonja!”!

The Other’s blood-smeared face split into a wide, sharp grin. “Wrong again.”

Sonja’s fangs sliced into her lower lip as she dragged the switchblade out of the fireplace embers. She could feel the blisters rise in the palm of her hand and hear her skin sizzle as she wrapped her fingers around its white-hot hilt. As she turned back to face Morgan, she saw his eyes drop back down, like the reels in a slot machine, shining with rage. With a roar of anger, he lunged, grabbing at her legs, and the façade of sophisticated gentility dissolved entirely, leaving only the snarling, rotting monster.

She struck at him blindly, more to force him into letting go than to try and kill him. The searing blade sliced through the corrupted flesh of his face like a hot knife through butter. Morgan shot to his feet. “Poison! Poison!” he screamed, his voice sounding like that of an old woman. The edges of the wound were already turning black and withering away from contact with the silver. “Unclean! Unclean!” he wailed, his voice cracking as it climbed the register. He clawed at the rapidly necrotizing tissue, desperately trying to keep the taint from spreading to the rest of his body. A thick, yellowish fluid welled up from between his fingers.

As Sonja staggered to her feet, her muscles shrieking as circulation was restored, she realized for the first time that the room was rapidly filling with smoke. She attempted another lunge toward Morgan, only to see Nasakenai emerge from the choking fog and hurry his master out of the room. Morgan was escaping. She had to stop him. Kill him. Get it over with, once and for all. She tried to follow him, but quickly lost track of them in the chaos. Her head ached horribly and her eyes burned as if someone had rubbed hot ashes in them—then she realized the air surrounding her was filled with soot and swirling cinders. She took a few steps in the general direction of the door, only to drop to her knees, gagging on the smoke. As her body was wracked by a coughing fit, it suddenly occurred to her how quiet it was inside her head. The Other’s needling voice, her unwanted, constant companion for decades, was strangely silent. She moved cautiously, as if probing a sore tooth with her tongue. Could it be that Morgan had somehow managed to destroy it?

No such luck, the Other whispered, its voice weaker than it had been in years. Don’t forget: you owe me one.

Sonja dragged herself to her feet, coughing violently as she struggled to pull oxygen from the smoke-filled room. She staggered into the hallway, now almost obscured by billowing smoke. She could hear the roar of fire and the laughter of children. The house shook like a dog shaking itself dry as Ghost Trap’s west wing collapsed into its cellar, knocking her to the floor. She lay there, dazed, wondering whether she would suffocate or burn to death first. The sound of laughing children grew louder.

A boy and girl, dressed in a sailor’s suit and a pinafore, emerged from the swirling smoke. She could hear the children’s long-dead, insectile voices buzzing in her ear, but could not make out what they were saying. The Seward children grabbed her by the hands and lifted her from the floor as if she weighed nothing, leading her through smoke-obscured rooms into a dark passage. Soon they were back within the tortured architecture of Ghost Trap’s outer house. As the Seward children hurried her through a series of hidden passages and interconnected rooms, Sonja was only dimly aware that her feet were no longer touching the floor.

Suddenly there was a desperate banshee wail, and their way was blocked by a hulking grotesque with two heads. The ghost-children deftly yanked their dazed charge out of the path of a large, blood-spattered ax, which bit deep into the floorboards. The gibbering, two-headed creature wrenched its weapon free from the splintered wood and lifted it aloft, only to freeze upon hearing the sound of a woman’s laughter—light, merry, free—echoing through the empty rooms. The creature paused to listen, its twisted, bat-snouted face grimacing.

Mrs. Seward’s ghost materialized beside that of her killer, grabbing the smaller of the two heads by its hair. The larger, deformed head squealed like a frightened piglet as she began to pull, flailing ineffectively at its attacker with its ax-hand. There was a muffled, sucking sound, like someone pulling a boot free of thick mud, as the shoulders and torso of the late Creighton Seward emerged from the apparition’s leprous skin.

The deformed head shrieked even louder than before, its clawed feet drumming against the bare boards like a petulant child throwing a tantrum, but to no avail: Mrs. Seward was not to be denied the reclamation of her husband. With a final, mighty tug, Seward’s naked body was freed from that of its demonic twin. The dead man shivered like a newborn foal and threw his arms around his murdered wife, his face pressed against her bosom. Robbed of its unwilling host, the parasitic demon collapsed like a gutted scarecrow, its corpus returning to formless ectoplasm.

Sonja stared at the embracing couple, reunited for the first time since that horrible night in 1907, when Creighton Seward, in a moment of weakness, made an unwise bargain in a bid for artistic genius.

Mrs. Seward, her face no longer bearing the horrific mark of her mutilation, then rose and wrapped her spectral arms about Sonja, brushing her translucent lips against her cheek as she enveloped her.

Suddenly Sonja found herself hurtling through room after room as if shot from a cannon, surrounded on all sides by crashing walls and collapsing floors as Ghost Trap’s unhallowed architecture collapsed in upon itself. She saw the stained glass window a split second before she was catapulted through it, and sent sailing through the air to land in the tangled, thorny embrace of an overgrown rosebush.

Dazed and badly stunned, Sonja heard yet another of Ghost Trap’s chimneys tumble down onto the ground next to her in a thunderclap of bricks. She realized she was in extreme danger of the exterior wall collapsing on top of her if she did not move, but could not find it in her to care. Morgan had escaped. After all those years spent tracking him, she had finally had him where she wanted him only to have him escape. She’d been so close, only to fail at her ultimate goal. Anise and Fell were dead; Morgan had disappeared into the shadows once more. Who cared whether she lived or died—or

Would even notice?

Suddenly a shadowy figure loomed over her, filling her vision. “Sonja! Thank God you’re alive!”

She squinted up at the figure bending over her. His face was smeared with soot, he reeked of smoke, and he looked like someone had whacked him in the head with a golf club. She thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.

“Palmer?”

“It ain’t the Easter Bunny, baby!” He laughed as he kissed her blood-smeared brow.

Once they were a safe distance away, they turned to watch the house death throes. “Look,” whispered Palmer, pointing at the smoke and sparks drifting heavenward.

Sonja watched as the pellucid outlines of the Seward family ascended the currents, followed by an equally pale and familiar figure with long, flowing hair. Accompanying them was the shade of a moon-faced man in a flapping white coat, holding a deformed infant cradled in his arms. Within seconds they were gone, lost among the smoke and soot and lightening sky.

“I guess I should ask you why you’re not on a plane to the Yucatan right now, but I’m not,” she said wearily, as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, Palmer. You up to driving back?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to hoof it into town,” he replied, pointing to the few tons of fireplace that now covered both of their vehicles. “Maybe we can pick up a ride into San Francisco from there.”

She groaned and took his hand. “I guess we better start walkin’ then, huh?”

As they made their way down the driveway towards the county road that lead out of the valley, there came the crunch of tires on gravel. Sonja and Palmer turned in time to see vintage Rolls with heavily tinted windows bearing down on them, Nasakenai behind the wheel, one side of his head swaddled in sooty bandages. Without thinking, Palmer threw his arms around Sonja and dove into a nearby ditch as the Rolls rocketed past, spewing gravel in its wake.

Morgan lay curled like a fetus inside the trunk of the Rolls, wrapped in blankets against the rising sun. Although his face still burned, he was certain he’d removed the silver-tainted flesh before the toxin had reached his central nervous system. He touched his left cheek and moaned. It had been lifetimes since he’d last known true pain, the kind only immortal flesh is heir to. The realization that he’d been badly—and permanently—scarred both angered and shamed him. Wounds dealt by silver weapons never truly healed, and they always left ugly scars. But that was not the worst part.

Broken bones would mend, damaged organs regenerate and even severed limbs would, in time, return to their former state. But there would be no healing for the deepest and deadliest wound she’d inflicted on him, only a gradual spread of infection.

Lord Morgan, late of the Inquisition and the Gestapo, lay on the floor of his car and contemplated the dreadful sickness that humans called love.

Epilogue:

A man’s mind, stretched by new ideas, can never go back to its original dimensions.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Palmer was hammering together a wooden crate on the porch of his hacienda when the mailman blew his whistle.

“Tweet, Daddy! Tweet!” Lethe squealed, rounding the corner of the house as fast as her baggy diapers would allow. Judging from the dirty tablespoon she was waving, and her muddy Babar the Elephant shirt, she’d been digging up the back patio again.

“Whoa, droopy drawers!” Palmer laughed, catching the toddler in his outstretched arms and flipping her upside down. Lethe giggled and wriggled in his grip like a puppy. Not bad for a nine-month-old. “You know you’re not supposed to go near the road!”

Palmer deposited the child in the macramé hammock he kept strung on the porch and trotted down to the mailbox at the foot of the hill. A dark, ragged form emerged from the hacienda and joined Lethe in the hammock. The little girl’s giggles were soon joined by peals of crystal chimes and the yammering of dolphins.

Palmer made a mental note to take the Land Rover into the city and buy some fencing material. Although Lethe was advanced for her age, he still had problems with her wanting to run out onto the road every time the mailman made his rounds. That was because Lethe loved getting mail. He sorted through the letters as he walked back up to the house. Two were from boutiques in California and New York, placing orders for three more crates of Day of the Dead tableaux, stuffed toad Mariachi bands and hand painted papier-mâché carnival masks. There was also a package addressed to Lethe with a fistful of Asian stamps plastered across it, and a postcard from Sonja.

“Look, honey! Aunt Boo sent you a present!” Palmer said as he handed the package to his foster-daughter, who was curled up in the seraph’s lap like a kitten. Within seconds, the porch was littered with tatters of brown paper and Lethe was playing with a rag doll dressed in a red kimono, its dyed corn-silk hair pulled into an elaborate geisha’s coiffure.

Palmer glanced at the front of the picture postcard— a panoramic view of Tokyo’s Ginza district after dark—then flipped it over to read the message. There was no salutation or signature. There never were.

Still no sign of M. But I’m getting closer. The chimera is very excited. It smells its old master. The scar makes it harder for M to change identities. There are rumors of atrocities in Thailand. Hope to be home for Xmas. Miss you both.

Palmer looked up from the card to find the seraph staring at him with its pupil-less golden eyes.

“No news, Fido.” The seraph nodded, although Palmer had his doubts as to how much the creature understood. “Lethe, sweetie, why don’t you two go play on the patio? I’ve got work to do.”

Lethe nodded her tiny dark head, her golden eyes flashing in the afternoon light, and hopped out of the hammock, leading the grizzled seraph by the hand. Palmer smiled as the unlikely twosome, nut-brown nature-child and bedraggled street person, disappeared around the corner of the house, Fido shambling after Lethe like a trained bear.

Even after all these months, Palmer still had a hard time accepting it all. A year ago he was doomed to twenty-to-life sentence. Now he was an expatriate yanqui, making a decent living selling Mexican and Central American folk art to painfully chic boutiques and galleries north of the border. He’d also discovered, to his surprise, he was a damn good father.

Yeah, a lot of things can change in the space of a year, he mused, fingering his jade ear-plug.

Lethe had re-appeared a couple of weeks after he and Sonja had set up housekeeping in the Yucatan. One minute the patio had been empty, the next Lethe and the seraph he now called Fido were there. Although the baby was barely a month old, she was already crawling and babbling. When it became evident the seraph was not going to leave, Sonja decided it was time to continue on her hunt for Morgan. Palmer suspected the seraph made her nervous. As it was, it had taken him a few weeks to get used to the creature’s presence. But after he started calling it Fido, he began to relax.

Every so often Sonja would appear on the doorstep, unannounced but always welcome, loaded down with exotic toys for her “niece.” Although she adored Lethe, she could not tolerate being around Fido for more than a few days. During her brief visits, she and Palmer would lay curled together in the hammock and listen to the night birds call. In its own strange way, their relationship was idyllic.

The last time Sonja had come home she’d been amused to see the ritual tattoo on Palmer’s chest. “What’s this? Have you decided to go modern primitive on me?” she chuckled as she ran her hands over the raised markings covering his pectoral muscles.

“I decided to get a tattoo to hide the scar from my surgery,” he explained. “Besides, it matches the scars you leave on my back.”

She was silent for a long moment before she spoke again. “Do you still have the dreams about your past life?”

“Sometimes. They’ve gotten stronger since Lethe arrived.”

“So what is this tattoo supposed to represent?”

“The old Mayan guy who did it says it’s the seal of the Chan Balam, the Jaguar Lords.”

In the three months since that conversation he had acquired the ability to speak fluent Lancondoan, the tongue of the children of Quetzalcoatl, and that he had stopped smoking cigarettes in favor of the burrito-sized hallucinogenic cigars once favored by the Mayan wizard-kings. He wondered what Sonja would have to say about his new lower-lip plug.

Palmer resumed his work on the packing crate, pausing every now and again to sip from a pitcher of lemonade. From his vantage point on the porch, he saw a campesino trudging his way along the unpaved road that ran past the house. The peasant, dressed in the traditional loose-fitting white cotton pants and tunic, a machete hanging from his belt, was headed in the direction of the paved highway three miles away, where a rattle-trap bus carried locals into the city.

Palmer stiffened at the sight of the stranger. He scanned his thoughts and studied his aura for traces of Pretender taint. Luckily for the campesino, he was exactly what he looked like—a simple farmer on his way to town. He would live to ride the bus to Mérida. Palmer heaved a sigh of relief. He disliked killing, even Pretenders. But he knew he could not allow his vigilance to flag, even for a moment.

For as every good parent knows, the jungle is full of jaguars hungry for the blood of children.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Sonja Blue Novels

Chapter One

‘I see the world through ancient eyes.

‘But they are not the eyes of an old man, dimmed by age and clouded by cataracts. And, unlike humans, while my mind is always filled with memories, I am rarely lost in the fog of recollection of the lassitude that accompanies the Ennui. My time on earth has been tenfold that of the oldest living man. But I, myself, am no relic. I stand outside that which ages mortal flesh and turns bones brittle as glass and makes teeth snap like chalk. I need never fear that my world will telescope down to what little light and sound can be strained through failing sensory apparatus.

‘I often look upon some of the aged creatures I once sported with, years ago, and marvel at their irretrievable descent into decay. A breast that was once succulent and firm becomes a withered dug.

A proud penis, rampant and full of the malt of life, is now only good for the elimination of waste—all what seems to be the blink of an eye.

‘For this is mankind’s heritage. It’s destiny. All of humanity’s triumphs and advances –its art, science, technology, and philosophy – in the end, can be summed up as nothing more than an attempt to escape death through sex.

‘Denied immortality as individuals, humans must seek eternal life as a species. Highborn king or lowly beggar, they are all nothing more than a lump of sweating flesh, straining on a nameless bed. And while I consider such attempts at eternity laughable, I must admit that their relentless breeding has succeeded in maintaining a certain continuity.

‘As for me, what memories I have of my life as a human are nothing more than faded ink on crumbling pages. The sentiments, dreams, and fears expressed in those earliest entries belong to a creature forever beyond my ken, thanks be to the forces that Made me. I have kept a journal for over five hundred years. There are literally a thousand volumes, stored in a hundred different hiding places. Why do I continue to write my thoughts down in such a manner? For no other reason that it has become a habit; and one I am loath to break.

‘Now where was I? Ah, yes. Humans. Of course, they provide my kind with sustenance: that deep red vintage that is so much sweeter when stolen. That much goes without saying. But there are more subtle, more rarefied pleasures to be had at their expense, as well.

‘Dawn is close at hand, but I do not fear its intrusion. I am not some lowly revenant, scuttling from the sun’s rays for fear of being reduced to a pile of oozing sores. I evolved past such worries decades before the invention of the steam engine. True, my powers are somewhat diminished during the daylight hours, and, like all of my kind, I find it necessary to lapse into a death-like ‘sleep’ in order to restore my vitality, but I am far from helpless during the daylight hours.

‘My driver cruises the streets of the Lower East Side. He asks me if I have a destination in mind. I almost give him an address of a low dive in Five Points, only to remember that the neighborhood was demolished over a century ago. Too bad. There was a brothel there operated for and by children that provided me with great amusement now and again.

‘The whores who are still out this ‘late’ are, at best, careworn. Most of them are crackheads or junkies, the ravages of their addictions obvious even to the most obtuse human gaze. Even if I were still prone to the human sexual urge, I would never dream of copulating with one of these horrors. They are rarely beautiful, and often they aren’t even women. But they are expendable, and when one of them disappears no one notices. That is all I require of them.

‘I order my driver to stop the car. A prostitute stands in a nearby doorway, fidgeting expectantly as she eyes the Rolls. The night must have indeed been slow—or her habit immense— if she is still working the streets this close to daybreak. She is tall with dark hair and high cheekbones, and is too thin and too dirty, but she will do for now. She saunters forward as I power down the window.

‘“Need a date, mister?” She coos, her breath redolent of gum disease, as she bends down to look into the interior of the car. When she smiles, I see that she is missing some of her teeth. She has what the humans call ‘meth mouth’.’

‘I say nothing as I open the car door. She hops in with an excited squeal that could almost pass for delight. The Rolls is already pulling away before the door closes.

‘“I’m Cheryl,” the whore says, rubbing the front of my pants with all the finesse and speed of a Girl Scout trying to make a fire without the aid of matches. When I look at her, I can see the virus gestating within her, eating away at the T-cells in her blood. I slap her hand away, and I see fear spark in her eyes as she gets her first really good look at my face. I reach inside my jacket and produce a roll of twenty dollar bills the size of my fist. The whore’s eyes widen as she licks her lips.

‘“Do you want this?” I ask.

‘“What I gotta do t’get it?”

‘“All you have to do is come home with me and play a little game.”

‘“What kinda game?” She asks hesitatingly but does not take her eyes off the money.

‘“Dress up,” I reply.’

‘Nasakenai, my Renfield, has the costume laid out in anticipation of my return. I lead the whore into a large room, empty save for a marble-topped table. She frowns at the leather jacket, stained T-shirt, ripped jeans and scuffed engineer’s boots awaiting her. She had, no doubt, been expecting something without a crotch.

‘“Is this it? Is this what you want me to wear?”

‘I say nothing, but simply smile. The whore shrugs and peels out of her working clothes. The room is cold, and I watch with detached interest as her flesh creeps and her nipples harden. She is awkward, and it takes her a few minutes to complete the change. As she shrugs into the leather jacket, it creaks with her every move.

‘“So, do I look okay? Is there anything else?” she asks, holding her arms up and out, modeling the costume for me.

‘“You just need two more things for the costume to be complete. You’ll find them in the inside breast pocket of the jacket.”

‘She reaches inside and removes the sunglasses and the switchblade. Her frown deepens upon seeing the knife. “What am I supposed to do with these things?”

‘The excitement is starting to stir within me, and my words come out as a breathy whisper. “Put the glasses on. Put them on now.”

‘The whore is confused, perhaps even a little frightened, but she is unwilling to forfeit the money I promised her. She puts on the sunglasses.

‘She is dirty and smells of her previous johns. Her hair is too long and very oily. Her motions lack grace and suppleness. But there is a tenuous resemblance, and that is enough. She is not the one I want, but she will do for now. I move closer, my arousal growing acute as the image of the one I desire shimmers behind my eyes.

‘“Show me the knife.” It is all I can do to keep the shiver out of my voice.

‘“What?”

‘“The knife!” I snap, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Show me the blade!”

‘The switchblade leaps from its hilt, like a minnow darting out of shallow water. She holds the knife cautiously, but, not without some familiarity. Perhaps she and the object of my desire are not so different, after all.

‘“Now what?” she asks.

‘“Stab me.”

‘“Are you fuckin’ crazy?” There is genuine indignation in her voice. This is far kinkier than she bargained for. She had figured me for some garden variety pervert, the kind who wants to drink piss or be shat upon; but this is too much. Even whores have their limits.

‘“I said stab me!” I have lost all patience with the trollop. If she will not willingly give me what I want, then I shall bring it about by force. I grab her by the throat and begin to squeeze. She raises her knife-hand. I catch a glimpse of metal as her fist drives into my chest. There is a cold sharpness as the blade enters me. I continue to squeeze her throat. Again she stabs me. And again. Blood sprays from my wound splattering both our faces. I close my eyes, imagining it is she who is ramming the knife into my heart.

‘The fear that radiates from the prostitute as I slowly choke the life from her is amongst the sweetest I have enjoyed. I groan in ecstasy as I hold her death rattle in the palm of my hand. I open my eyes, half expecting to see my beloved’s face before me, contorted in death. Instead, there’s nothing but a dead whore with a blackened, swollen tongue protruding lewdly between her painted lips. The sunglasses have come loose during her struggle, and I can see her eyes, filled with burst blood vessels, starting from their sockets like those of a grotesque insect. Disgusted, I let the corpse drop.

‘It is only then that I realize that the switchblade is still lodged in my chest. I stare down at the hilt protruding between my ribs. My white silk shirt is now the color of port wine. Chuckling to myself, I pull it free.

‘I close my eyes again and see my love moving like a panther tracking its prey, her eyes burning in the darkness. She wants me. Her passion for me radiates from her like a dark halo. But what she lusts after is not my touch or kiss. No, what she desires is my death.

‘When I look into her mirrored eyes I know fear and joy. She is so beautiful and so deadly. I stand in awe of her; my lovely, lethal masterpiece. To think that I was responsible for creating such a terrible beauty is both humbling and exhilarating. Is this how Pygmalion felt when he saw his Galatea step down from her pedestal—? But in my case my creation split my face open with a silver knife for good measure.

‘I touch the scar that pulls the right side of my face into a rictus grin and think of my fatal beauty. I have suffered countless mutilations throughout my existence, and have recovered from them all. But I shall carry the wounds she dealt me forever.

‘I close my remaining eye and I see her standing there, naked save for the mantle of power that crackles about her like fox fire. The scar over my heart puckers.

‘Gods of the Outer Dark help me. I love her.

And that is why I must destroy her. Again. And again. Until I am certain I can bring myself to do the deed for real, and obliterate my darling Sonja Blue, once and for all, from the face of the earth.’

—From the journals of Sir Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star.

Chapter Two

William Palmer woke the same way a swimmer emerges from the sea: gasping for air. He laid on the bed, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling for a long moment before really seeing it, the last of the nightmare bleeding away from the corners of his eyes.

Dream. Thank God. Just a dream.

He’d been dreaming of Ghost Trap again. The house had been built in the early Twentieth century by a gifted, if demented, architect who designed it as protection from the vengeful spirits of his slaughtered family. The mansion had been a crazed conglomeration of rooms without windows, blind stairways, secret passageways, and other mad fancies, using non-Euclidian geometric principles that not only confused the restless dead, but disoriented the living. And for someone like Palmer, who possessed psionic abilities beyond those of normal humans, Ghost Trap was the psychic equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits.

Two-and-a-half years ago, he had found himself lost in Ghost Trap and at the mercy of the dead that roamed its contorted halls. He’d entered in search of the woman who had helped him learn to deal with his psychic powers while dragging him into her blood-feud with the vampire known as Morgan.

Palmer had survived that night in Ghost Trap—if just barely. He had lived to see the horror house consumed by flames, freeing its spectral occupants, once and for all. Ghost Trap was no more, yet it still existed inside his head, where it housed his nightmares.

Palmer stared up at the ceiling fan mounted over the bed, watching the rotors beat the heavy, humid air in near-silence. No doubt the stickiness and heat had contributed to his bad dreams. It was uncomfortable sleeping inside, but the mosquitoes were too fierce this season for him to retire to the hammock on the front porch.

He sat up, tossing aside the sweat-drenched sheets. He wasn’t going to get back to sleep, at least not anytime soon. He swung his feet onto the floor and stood up with a groan, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror opposite the bed. He ran a hand across the ritual tattoo that covered his entire chest. It was of Mayan design, as were the jade plugs that stretched his earlobes, and was the symbol of the House of the Jaguar Lords.

Palmer didn’t hold with past-life regression therapy, channeling, Space Brothers, or any of the other New Age crap. But it just so happened he was the reincarnation of a pre-Columbian Mayan wizard-king. He was also an ex-private investigator, a pardoned felon, a telepath, and the proprietor of a moderately successful specialty-export business.

Palmer padded down the hallway, naked except for a pair of boxers. He paused at the nursery, quietly opening the door so as not to wake Lethe.

I really should stop calling it the nursery, he thought to himself, not for the first time. It took him a second or two to locate her amidst the stuffed animals and dolls she shared her bed with. Her hair, as dark and sleek as a sable’s, peeked out from between a Raggedy Ann doll and a teddy bear.

He was going to have to get her some new clothes pretty soon. She’d already outgrown the ones he bought last month. She had grown another three inches, practically overnight. Palmer’s eyes wandered to the closet door he used as Lethe’s official growth chart and the series of overlapping pencil marks with crabbed notations as to date and age. As of her last measuring, she stood five foot one. Pretty impressive for a child who wasn’t three years old yet.

One of the shadows near the foot of Lethe’s bed detached itself and moved towards Palmer. Two points of golden light, set about the height of a man’s eyes, suddenly blinked on.

“Don’t worry, Fido. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just checkin’ in,” Palmer whispered.

The hulking apparition, which resembled a mound of dirty laundry sculpted into the form of a human being, nodded dumbly and returned to its silent vigil. During the two and a half years Palmer had spent in the company of the seraph, he still had no idea what the creature thought—or if it thought at all. While it appeared to be Lethe’s appointed guardian, it had never once attempted to communicate with Palmer—at least on a level that he could understand.

Satisfied everything was under control inside the house, Palmer paused at the sliding glass door that led out onto the patio, with its expensive Spanish tile and three-tiered fountain that constantly burbled to itself.

As he stepped outside, he found the humid Yucatan night to provide no relief from the oppressive heat. Instead, it felt as if the world’s largest dog was breathing on him. Palmer wiped at the sweat on his brow and upper lip as he peered up at the moonlit sky.

‘Where are you?’ his mind whispered into the night The sound of a radio scanning through a thousand different competing signals filled his head. Some were strong, others weak. Some were in languages he understood while the majority was a jumble of nonsense. Some were angry, some were sad, some were happy, many were confused. The signals blurred and clashed, waxed and waned.

‘Where are you?’ He boosted his own signal, hoping to cut through the drift of muted voices that filled the ether. This time he was rewarded with a response made faint and blurry by distance, but still recognizable.

‘In New Orleans.’

He smiled at the sound of her voice in his head. Even though she was not there to see it, he knew she felt it.

‘When are you coming back?’

‘Soon. But I still have work to attend to here.’

‘I miss you.’

‘I miss you, too.’ She smiled then. He could feel it.

‘Any luck?’

‘No sign of him yet, but I have a hunch or two as to where he might be hiding. How is Lethe?’

‘Fine. I guess.’

‘Good. I have to go now. I’m on the hunt.’

‘Sonja—?’

There was no reply, only the squawk and squelch of the minds of a million strangers babbling into the void.

Chapter Three

She had to give the dead boy credit; he had the trick of appearing human nailed down tight. He’d learned just what gestures and inflections to use in his conversation to hide the fact that his surface gloss and glitz wasn’t there merely to disguise basic shallowness, but an utter lack of humanity.

She’d seen enough of the kind of humans he imitated: pallid, self-important intellectuals who prided themselves on their sophistication and knowledge of “hip” art, sharpening their wit at the expense of others. Like the inhuman mimic in their midst, they produced nothing while thriving on the vitality from others. The only difference was that the vampire was more honest about it.

She worked her way to the bar, careful to keep herself shielded from the dead boy’s view, both physically and psychically. It wouldn’t do for her quarry to catch wind of her just yet. She could hear the vampire’s nasal intonations as he held forth on the demerits of various artists.

“Frankly, I consider his use of photo-montage inexcusably banal—if I want to look at bad Photoshop, I’ll log onto Deviant Art!”

She wondered whom the vampire had stolen that particular drollery from. Dead boys of his wattage didn’t come up with witty remarks spontaneously. When you have to spend a lot of conscious energy remembering to breathe and blink, there’s no such thing as top-of-your-head snappy patter. It was all protective coloration, right down to the last double entendre and Monty Python quote.

It would be another decade or two before the vampire, dressed in skinny jeans and an ironic t-shirt and wearing oversized plastic frame glasses could divert his energies to something besides the full-time task of insuring his continuance. Not that the dead boy had much of a future in the predator business.

She waved down the bartender and ordered a beer. As she waited its arrival, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror backing the bar. To the casual observer she looked to be no more than twenty-five. Tricked out in a battered leather jacket, with a stained Joy Division t-shirt, patched jeans, mirrored sunglasses, and roughly chopped dark hair, she looked like just another Goth girl checking out the scene. No one would ever guess she was almost sixty years old.

She sucked the cold suds down, participating in her own form of protective coloration. She could drink a case or three of the stuff with no effect outside of pissing like a racehorse. Beer didn’t do it for her anymore. Neither did hard liquor. Or cocaine. Or heroin. Or crack. She had tried them all, in dosages that would have put the entire US Olympic Team in the morgue; but no luck. There was only one drug that plunked her magic twanger: the Deep Red.

Yeah, the dead boy was good enough to fool another vampire. But he didn’t.

She eyed her prey speculatively. She doubted she’d have any trouble taking the sucker down. She rarely did, these days. At least not the lesser undead that lacked major psionic muscle. Sure, they had enough mesmeric ability to gull the humans in their vicinity, but little else. Compared to her own psychic abilities, the hipster vampire on her radar might as well have been packing a pea-shooter. Still, it wasn’t smart to get too cocky. Lord Morgan had dismissed her in such a high-handed manner, and now he was missing half his face.

She shifted her vision from the human to the Pretender spectrum, studying the vampire’s true appearance. She wondered if the art aficionados clustered about him, their heads bobbing like puppets, would still consider his pronouncements worthy if they knew his skin was the color of rotten sailcloth, or that his blackened lips were so shriveled that his fangs were perpetually visible in a death’s head grimace. No doubt, if they could see him for what he truly was, the would drop their little plastic cups of cheap wine and back away in horror, their surface glaze of urbanite sophistication replaced with honest, old fashioned monkey-brain terror.

Humans need masks in order to live their day-to-day lives, even amongst their own kind. Little did they know that their dependence on such artifice provided the perfect hiding place for a raft of predators, such as the vampire pretending to be a hipster? Predators like her self.

“Uh, excuse me?”

She jerked around a little too fast, startling the young man at her elbow. She tightened her grip on the switchblade in her jacket pocket. She was so focused on her prey she had been unaware of him until he approached her. Sloppy of her. And dangerous.

“Yeah, what is it?” she snarled.

The young man blinked, taken aback by her brusqueness. “I, uh, was wondering if I might, uh, buy you a drink?”

She automatically scanned him for signs of Pretender taint, but he came up one hundred percent USDA Human. He was taller than she was by a couple of inches, his dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, and an acrylic plug in the lobe of his right ear. Despite the body jewelry, he was quite handsome.

She was at a loss for words. She was not used to being approached by normal people in public. She tended to generate a low-level psychic energy that most humans found unnerving, if not actively antagonistic. In layman’s terms, she tended to either scare people away or piss them off without even having to open her mouth. She shot her prey a glance out of the corner of her eye. Shit! The bastard was starting to make his move, hustling one of his more entranced hangers-on out of the club.

“I realize this is going to sound like a really cheap come-on,” he said with a shy smile. “But I saw you from across the room—and I just had to meet you.”

“There’s something I have to take care of—I’ll be right back! I promise!” she blurted. “Don’t go away!”

And with that she dashed off in pursuit of her target for the night.

She scanned the parking lot, checking for signs of the vampire’s passage. Hopefully she wasn’t too late. Once a bloodsucker seduced a human away from the herd, they tended to move quickly. She knew that from her own experience at the hands of Lord Morgan, the undead bastard responsible for her own transformation.

She found the vampire and his prey sitting in the backseat of silver BMW with heavily tinted windows; their blurred silhouettes moving like shadows reflected in an aquarium. There was no time to waste. She’d have to risk being spotted.

The imitation hipster looked genuinely surprised as her fist punched through the back window, sending tinted safety glass flying into the car. He hissed a challenge, exposing his fangs as he whipped about to face her. His victim sat beside him, as motionless as a mannequin, eyes unfocused and fly open, his erect penis vibrating like a tuning fork.

She grabbed the vampire by the collar of his ironic t-shirt and pulled him, kicking and screaming, through the busted back windshield. The mesmerized human didn’t even blink.

“Let’s get this over with, dead boy!” she snapped as she hurled the snarling vampire onto the parking lot gravel. “I got a hot date waiting for me!”

The vampire launched himself at her, talons hooked and fangs extended. She moved to meet the attack, flicking open her switchblade with a snap of her wrist. The silver blade sank into the vampire’s exposed thorax, causing him to shriek in pain. The vampire collapsed, his body going into spasms as his system reacted to the silver’s toxin.

She knelt and swiftly removed the vampire’s head from his shoulders with her switchblade. The body was already starting to putrefy by the time she locked it in the trunk of the car and tossed the keys down a nearby storm drain.

Sonja looked around, but there were no witnesses to be seen in the darkened lot. She moved around to the passenger side and opened the door, tugging the hypnotized human out of the car. He stood propped against the bumper like a drunkard, his face slack and his penis dangling from his pants like a deflated party balloon. She pushed down her sunglasses and took his chin between her thumb and forefinger and tilted his head so that his eyes met hers.

“This never happened. You do not remember leaving the bar with anyone. Is that clear?”

“N-nothing h-happened,” he stammered.

“Excellent! Now go back in the bar and have a good time. Oh, and stick that thing back in your pants! You don’t want to get busted for indecent exposure.”

She was buzzing by the time she re-entered the bar. The adrenaline from the battle was still sluicing around inside her; juicing her perceptions and making her feel as if she was made of lightning and spun glass. It wasn’t as intense as the boost she got from blood, but it still felt good.

Someone jostled her and she looked into the face of a mousey young woman, her face set into a scowl. She paused, taking in the schizophrenia that radiated from the other woman’s skull like a martyr’s halo. The scowling woman blushed, drew her shoulders in, ducked her chin, and hurried away as if she’d suddenly woken up and discovered herself sleepwalking. She shrugged and continued scanning the bar for the young man who spoke to her earlier.

Give it up, he’s forgotten you and found another bimbo for the evening.

Sonja fought to keep from cringing at the sound of the voice inside her head. She had managed to go almost all night without having to endure its commentary. Hopefully it wouldn’t try and start trouble for her.

She found him waiting for her at the bar. She made a last minute spot-check for any blood or telltale ichors that might be clinging to her person before moving to join him. “You still interested in buying me that drink?” she asked.

The young man’s smile was genuinely relieved. “You came back!”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

“I like a woman of her word,” he said as he offered her his hand. “I guess I should introduce myself: I’m Judd.”

She took his hand and smiled without parting her lips. “Pleased to meet you, Judd. I’m Sonja.”

“What the hell’s going on here?!”

Judd’s smile faltered as his gaze went beyond Sonja’s right shoulder. She turned and found herself almost nose-to-nose with a young woman dressed in a skin-tight black sheath, fishnet stockings, and way too much make-up, as well as a psychosis that covered her face like the caul on a newborn infant, with pulsing indentations marking her eyes, nose and mouth.

Judd closed his eyes and sighed. “Brittany, look, it’s over! Get a life of your own and let go of mine!”

“Oh, is that how you see it? Funny, I remember you saying something different! Like how you’d always love me! Guess I was stupid to believe that, huh? You’re not getting away that easy, asshole! “ Brittany’s rage turned the madness covering her face an interesting shade of magenta that swirled and pulsed like a lava lamp. “And who’s this—your new slut?” she snarled, pushing Sonja’s leather-clad shoulder to back her away from Judd.

Sonja grabbed the other woman’s wrist, careful not to break it in front of witnesses. “Don’t touch me,” she said icily.

C’mon, snap the crazy bitch’s arm off, The Other purred. She deserves it!

“I’ll fucking touch you anytime I want! Just you stay away from my boyfriend, bitch!” Brittany tried to yank herself free of Sonja’s grip, with no success. “Let me go!” She made to strike her rival with her free hand, only to have that one grabbed as well, forcing her to look directly into Sonja’s face.

Brittany’s features grew pale and she stopped struggling. Sonja knew then that the other woman was seeing her—truly seeing her—for what she was. Only three kinds of human can perceive the Real World: psychics, poets, and lunatics. And Brittany definitely fit the last category.

Sonja released the girl, who turned and hurried away, nearly tripping over her own high heels as she fled.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Judd apologized. “Brittany’s a weird girl. We lived together for a few months, but she was incredibly jealous. It got to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore, so I moved out. She’s been dogging my tracks ever since. She scared off my last two girlfriends.”

Sonja shrugged. “I don’t scare easy.”

He wasn’t afraid of her. More importantly, she did not detect the self-destructive darkness that usually attracted humans to her kind. Judd was not a suicidal moth drawn to her flame, nor was he a Renfield in search of a master. He was simply a good-natured young man who found her physically attractive. The novelty of his normalcy intrigued her.

He bought her several drinks, all of which she downed without effect. But she did feel giddy, almost lightheaded, while in his company. To be mistaken for a desirable, human woman was actually quite flattering; especially since she’d stopped thinking of herself as human some time ago.

They ended up dancing, adding their bodies to the surging crowd that filled the mosh pit. At one point, Sonja was amazed to find herself laughing, genuinely laughing, one arm wrapped about Judd’s waist. And then Judd leaned in and kissed her.

She barely had time to retract her fangs before his tongue found hers. She slid her other arm around his waist and pulled him into her, grinding herself against him. He responded eagerly, his erection rubbing against her hip like a friendly tomcat. And then she found herself wondering how his blood would taste.

She pushed him away so hard he staggered back a couple of steps, almost falling on his ass. She shook her head as if trying to dislodge something in her ear, a guttural moan rising from her chest.

There was a confused, hurt look on his face. “Sonja? Is something wrong?”

She could see his blood beckoning her beneath the surface of his skin: the veins traced in blue, the arteries pulsing purple. She turned her back on him and ran for the door, her head lowered, sending a knot of dancers flying like bowling pins. Some of them hurled insults in her direction, a couple even spat at her, but she was deaf to their anger.

She made sure to put a couple of blocks between her and the bar before she stopped to catch her breath. She slumped into a darkened doorway, staring at her shaking hands as if they belonged to someone else.

“I liked him. I honestly liked him and I was going to... going to...” She couldn’t finish the thought.

Like. Hate. What’s the difference? Blood is the life, wherever it comes from.

“Not like that. I never feed off anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Never.”

Aren’t we special?

“Shut up, bitch.”

“Sonja?”

She had him pinned to the wall, one forearm clamped against his windpipe before she realized it was Judd.

“I’m...sorry...” he gasped out, his eyes bugging from their sockets.

She stepped back, allowing him to drop. “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. More than you realize.”

Judd regarded her apprehensively as he massaged his throat, but there was still no fear in his eyes. “Look, I don’t know what it is I said or did back there that put you off...”

“The problem isn’t with you, Judd. Believe me.”

She turned and began walking away, but he hurried after her.

“I know an all-night coffeehouse near here,” he suggested. “Maybe we could go and talk things over there—?”

“Judd, just leave me alone, okay? You’d be a lot better off if you just forgot you ever met me.”

“How could I forget someone like you?” He was keeping pace alongside her, desperately trying to make eye contact. “C’mon Sonja! Give it a chance! I—damn it, would you just look at me?”

She stopped in mid-step to face him, her expression unreadable behind her mirrored sunglasses. “That’s the last thing you want me to do.”

Judd sighed and fished a pen and a piece of paper out of his pocket. “You’re one weird chick, that’s for sure! But I like you, don’t ask me why.” He scribbled something on the scrap of paper and shoved it into her hand. “Look, here’s my cell number and email address. Call me, okay?”

She closed her fist around the paper. “Judd—”

“No strings attached, I promise. Just call me.”

Sonja was surprised to find herself smiling. “Okay. I’ll call you. Now will you leave me alone?”

Buy Paint It Black now!

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 © by Nancy A. Collins

ISBN 978-1-4976-6172-1

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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