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Paint It Black

Nancy A. Collins

Originally published in 1995 as part of Midnight Blue: The Sonja Blue Chronicles (White Wolf Publishing)

This edition has been heavily revised and updated. It is the author’s preferred version.

For My Best Friend

Dave Ryan

1954-1992

“Smoke ’em if you got ’em”

Prelude

Particularly

When something like a dog is barking

When something like a goose is born a freak

When something like a fox is luminous

When something like a tortoise crystallizes

When something like a wolf slides by

All these things are harmful to the health of man

—Hagiwara Sakataro, Harmful Animals

Sonja Blue looked out across the predawn rooftops. Most of the buildings were still dark, save for scattered windows here and there that marked early risers and insomniacs. The moon was down, and the sun had yet to make its appearance, leaving the city to darkness deeper than midnight. It was time for the changing of the guard. She looked down on the streets from her perch and watched the night things begin their retreat. Not just prostitutes and drunkards and other so-called ‘night owls, but those things that shrink from the sun for fear of burning.

A succubus wearing the outward appearance of a crack whore was bartering with a drunken older man. The succubus lifted her head, nostrils flaring as she scented the coming dawn, and sped up the transaction. The older man seems pleased he was getting such a good deal on pussy as they staggered into the darkened alley. He won’t think it’s such a bargain when, in the middle of his cut-rate fuck, her body reveals razor-filled mouths in places he never dreamed of.

A pack of vargr made their way down a connecting side street, headed in the direction of the river front. The early hour and the accompanying darkness have made them brave enough to run in their true skins. They are young, at least by werewolf standards, and lope along, two abreast and three deep, almost on all fours. They snap and growl and bark at the shadows. Any human unlucky enough to encounter them might, at first glance, mistake them for a pack of feral dogs—until they stand up on their hind legs and bay to signal an attack.

After the werewolves passed by, a homeless man emerged from a piss-soaked doorway. He was dressed in rags, his feet encased in busted-out boots stuffed full of newspaper. She studied him closely, in case he was one of the seraphim in disguise. But after a closer inspection, she realized he was just another vagrant. He looked old, but it was hard to tell for sure because of the grime caking his hands and face. Not that it mattered. When you’re that down-and-out it’s all the same.

The old derelict clutched an empty vodka bottle in one hand as he muttered aloud to himself. He tilted the bottle back, tonguing the neck for one last drop. His brow furrowed upon realizing it was empty and, in a sudden burst of rage, he shouted an obscenity and hurled the bottle to the curb. The sound it made as in the predawn silence was impressively loud.

The old man seemed to find a particular pleasure in his noise-making and continued to do so. He ranted at the top of his voice, his voice bouncing off the surrounding buildings like a handball. He kicked a garbage can over and picked up a couple of bottles that rolled out of the container and dashed them against the curb. Just as he seemed to be losing steam, there came the sound of leathery wings and, a second later, the homeless man was gone as if he had never existed. Sonja looked up into the pre-dawn sky and spotted a diligent gargoyle matriarch winging her way back to her hungry chicks, carrying something large and still squirming in her.

As the horizon began to slowly lighten from black to gray, she finally spotted her own brand of prey. The sight of its pallid features and blood-red eyes made her want to puke as it clung to the shadows. She hated them more than all the other Pretending races combined. The very sight of them made her palms itch and her guts tighten. All she wanted was to drive her silver switchblade deep into their worm-fed hearts.

She grinned in anticipation of the slaughter that was sure to follow, exhilarating in the feel of the morning breeze on her exposed fangs. She did not want to lose the vampire’s trail, so she abandoned her perch atop the spire and crawled headfirst down the side of the St. Louis Cathedral to hurry after her target.

PART ONE

When the Dead Love

I am the Vampire at my own veins

one of the great lost horde

doomed for the rest of time, and beyond,

“to laugh - but smile no more.”

—Baudelaire, Heauton Timo Roumenos

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?”

Chapter Four

When she revived the next evening she found the phone number tucked away in the pocket of her leather jacket. She sat cross-legged on the coarse cotton futon that served as her bed and stared at it for a long time.

She’d been careful to make sure Judd hadn’t followed her. Her current nest was a drafty loft apartment in an old warehouse in the district just outside the French Quarter. Outside of her sleeping pallet, an antique cedar wardrobe, and a few scattered packing crates that contained the esoteric curios she used as barter with certain information brokers, the huge space was practically empty. Except for those occasions when the Dead came to visit.

At first she didn’t recognize the ghost, as he had lost his sense of self since his death, which blurred his spectral image. He swirled up through the floorboards like a gust of blue smoke, gradually taking shape before her eyes. The ghost-light radiating from him was the only illumination in the room. It was only when the phantom produced a smoldering cigarette from his own ectoplasm that she knew whom he was—or, rather, had once been.

“Hello, Chaz.”

The ghost of her former Renfield made a noise that sounded like a cat being drowned. The Dead cannot speak clearly — even to Pretenders — save for three days of the year: Fat Tuesday, Halloween, and Candlemas.

“Come to see how your murderer is getting on, I take it?” she asked

The ghost made a sound like a church bell played at half-speed.

“Sorry, I don’t have an Ouija board, or we could have a proper conversation. Is there a special occasion for tonight’s haunting, or are things just boring over on your side?”

Chaz frowned and pointed at the scrap of paper Sonja held in her hand.

“What? You don’t want me to call this number?”

He nodded his head, nearly sending it floating from his shoulders.

“You tried warning Palmer away from me. That didn’t work; but I suppose you know that.”

The ghost’s laughter sounded like fingers raking a chalkboard.

Sonja grimaced. “Laugh all you want, but he’s better in bed than you ever were!”

Chaz made an obscene gesture that was rendered pointless since he no longer had a body from the waist down.

Sonja grinned and clapped her hands, rocking back and forth on her haunches. “I knew that’d burn your ass, dead or not! Now piss off! I’ve got better things to do than play charades with a dead hustler!”

Chaz yowled like a baby dropped in a vat of boiling oil and disappeared in a swirl of dust and ectoplasm, leaving Sonja alone with Judd’s phone number still clenched in her fist.

Hell, if Chaz doesn’t want me to call the guy, then it must be the right thing to do, she thought as she reached for her cell phone.

Their rendezvous place was an all-hours establishment in the French Quarter that had, over the course of the last fifty years, been a bank, a show-bar, and a porno shop before finally becoming a coffee house. They sat at a small table and sipped iced coffee, staring out the window at the late-night traffic on Decatur Street.

Judd’s hair was freshly washed and he smelled of after shave, but those were the only concessions made to the mating ritual. He still wore his ear-plug, as well as a t-shirt that had been laundered so often the silkscreened image was starting to flake off. He poked at the iced coffee with a straw. “If I’m not getting too personal — what was last night all about?”

Sonja studied her hands as she spoke. “Look, Judd. There’s a lot about me you don’t know — and I’d like to keep it that way. If you insist on asking about my past, I’m afraid I’ll have to leave. It’s not that I don’t like you—I do—but I’m a very private person. And it’s for a good reason.”

“Is there someone else?”

“Yes. Yes, there is.”

“A husband?”

“No, I’m not married.”

Judd nodded as if this explained something. It was obvious that some of what she said was bothering him, but he was trying to play it cool. Sonja wondered what it was like, living a life where the worst things you had to deal with were jealous lovers and hurt feelings. It seemed almost paradisiacal.

After they finished their drinks they hit the Quarter. It was after midnight and the streets outside the bars were decorated with clots of young people dressed in black leather, sequins, and recycled Seventies rags. The hipsters milled about, flashing their tattoos and bumming cigarettes off one another as they waited for something to happen.

Someone called Judd’s name and he swerved across the street toward a knot of people lounging outside the Crystal Blue Persuasion. Sonja hesitated before following him. A young man dressed in a black duster, his shoulder-length hair braided into three pig tails and held in place by Tibetan prayer beads moved forward to greet them. Out of habit, Sonja scanned his face for Pretender taint. Human. While Judd and his friend spoke, she casually examined the rest of the group loitering outside the club. Human. Human. Human. Hu—

She froze.

The smell of vargr was strong, like the stink of a wet dog, and it radiated from a young man with long hair wearing a leather jacket with sleeves that looked like they’d been chewed off, leaving streamers of mangled leather like strings of gristle. He had one arm draped over the shoulder of a young girl.

The werewolf met Sonja’s gaze and held it, grinning his contempt. Her hand automatically closed around her switchblade.

“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine—”

Judd’s hand was on her elbow, drawing her attention away from the teenage werewolf and his prey. “Sonja, I’d like you to meet Arlo, he’s an old buddy of mine...”

Judd’s friend looked at Sonja as if she’d just crawled from under a rock. “Pleased to meet you,” he mumbled.

“Yeah. Sure,” she grunted in reply as she shot a sideways glance at the vargr twelve feet away. He was murmuring something into the girl’s ear. She giggled and nodded her head and the two broke away from the rest of the group, sauntering down the street in the direction of the river. The werewolf paused to give Sonja one last look over his shoulder, his grin too wide and his teeth too big, before disappearing into the shadows with his victim.

That’s right. Pretend you didn’t see it. Pretend you don’t know what that hell-hound’s going to do with that girl. You can’t offend lover boy here by running off to snuff a werewolf, can you?

“Shut the fuck up, damn you,” she muttered under her breath.

“I beg your pardon?” Arlo asked stiffly.

“Just talking to myself, that’s all,” Sonja replied hastily.

Judd bid his friends good night and they headed farther down into the French Quarter. As they passed one of the seedy bars that catered to the hardcore alcoholic trade, someone called out Sonja’s name.

A black man, his hair plaited into dreadlocks, stepped from the doorway of the Monastery. He wore a black turtleneck sweater and immaculate designer jeans, a gold peace sign the size of a hood ornament slung around his neck.

“Long time no see, Blue.”

“Hello, Mal.”

The demon Malfeis smiled, exposing teeth that belonged in the mouth of a shark. “No hard feelings, I hope? I didn’t want to sell you out like that, girlchick, but I was under orders from Below Stairs.”

“We’ll talk about it later, Mal...”

The demon noticed Judd. “Got yourself a new Renfield, I see.”

“Shut up!” Sonja hissed, her aura crackling about her head like an electric halo.

Mal lifted his hands in supplication. “Whoa! Didn’t mean to hit a sore spot there, girly-girl.”

“Sonja? Is this guy bothering you?” Judd gave Mal a suspicious glare, blind to the demon’s true appearance.

“No. Everything’s cool.” Sonja turned her back on the grinning demon and tried to block out the sound of his laughter echoing in her mind.

“Who was that guy?”

“Judd—”

“I know! I promised I wouldn’t ask about your past.”

Sonja shrugged. “Mal is a—business associate of mine. That’s all you need to know about him, except, no matter what, never ask him a question. Ever.”

They walked on in silence for a couple more minutes, and then Judd took her into his arms. His kiss was warm and probing and she felt herself begin to relax. Then he reached for her sunglasses.

She batted his hand away, fighting the urge to snarl. “Don’t do that.”

“I just want to see your eyes.”

“No,” she hissed as she pulled away from him.

“I’m sorry—”

“No, there’s nothing you need to be sorry about,” she assured him. “I had a nice time, Judd. I really did. But I have to go—”

“You’ll call me, won’t you?” he asked anxiously.

“God help me, I’m afraid I will.”

Why don’t you fuck him? He wants it bad. So do you. You can’t hide that from me.

The Other’s voice was a nettle wedged into the folds of her brain, impossible to dislodge or ignore. Sonja opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of whole blood; cracking its seal open like she would a beer.

Not that bottled crap again! I hate that shit! You might as well go back to drinking cats! Wouldn’t you rather have something nice and fresh? Say a good B negative mugger or an O positive rapist? There’s plenty of time to go trawling before the sun comes up...

“Shut up! I’ve had a belly full of you tonight already!”

My-my! Aren’t we being a touchy one? Tell me, how long do you think you can keep up the pretense of being normal? You’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be human. Why torture yourself by pretending you’re something you’re not simply to win the favor of apiece of beefsteak?

“He likes me, damn it. He actually likes me.”

And what exactly are you?

“I’m not in the mood for your fuckin’ mind games! Let me have this. Let me be normal, for once.”

Congratulations! You’re finally one of us. You’re a Pretender.

Sonja shrieked and hurled the half-finished bottle of blood into the sink. She picked up one of the few pieces of furniture in the loft—a rickety card table—and smashed it to the floor, jumping up and down on the scattered pieces. It was a stupid, pointless gesture, but it made her feel better, and it shut up the Other. At least for a little while.

She kept calling him. She knew it was stupid, even dangerous, to socialize with humans in such a manner, but she couldn’t help herself. There was something about him that kept drawing her back, despite her better judgment. The only time she’d known such compulsion was when the thirst was on her. Was this love? Or was it simply another form of hunger?

Judd, unlike Chaz and Palmer, was not a psychic, sensitive to the unseen world of the Pretenders. He was a mere human, blind and dumb to the miracles and terrors of the Real World, just like poor, doomed Claude. Exposure to the Real World could very well drive him mad or, worse, pervert his psyche, and Sonja had no intention of allowing that to happen.

Their relationship, while charged with an undercurrent of eroticism, was essentially chaste. She wanted him so badly she did not dare do more than kiss or hold hands. If she should lose control, there was no telling what might happen. To his credit, Judd had not pressed the sex issue much. He was not happy with the arrangement, but honored her request that they “take it slow.”

As to be expected, this did not sit well with the Other. It constantly taunted her, goading her with obscene fantasies and suggestions concerning Judd. Sonja tried to ignore its gibes as best she could, but she knew that something somewhere was bound to snap.

Chapter Five

Brittany wiped the tears from her eye, smearing mascara all over her cheek and the back of her hand. Crying made the words on the computer screen swim, but she didn’t care. She loved him. She really, truly loved him. And perhaps now, after she did what she had to do to save him, he’d finally realize it. He needed proof of her love. And what better proof than to rescue him from the clutches of a monster?

Dearest Darling,

I tried to warn you about That Woman. But you are blind to what she Really Is. She is Evil Itself: a Demon sent from Hell to claim your Soul! I knew what she was the moment I saw her, and she knows I know, too. Her hands and mouth drip Blood! Her eyes burn with the fires of Hell! She if surrounded by a cloud of negative energy Red as Blood! She means to drag you to Hell, but I won’t let her. I Love You too much to let that happen. I’ll take care of this horrible Monster. I’ve been talking to God a lot Lately, and He told me how to deal with Devils like Her. I Love you so very, very Much. I want You to Love Me too. I am doing this all for You. Please Love Me.

Brittany

Judd woke up at two in the afternoon, as usual. Since he worked six-to-midnight four days a week, he had long since adopted the nocturnal lifestyle. After he got off work he usually headed down to the Quarter to chill with his buddies or, more recently, hang with Sonja until four or five in the morning.

He yawned as he dumped a couple of heaping tablespoons of Guatemalan into the hopper of his coffee maker. Sonja. Now there was a weird chick. But not in a schizzy, death-obsessed art school drop-out way like Brittany. Her strangeness issued from something far deeper than bourgeois neurosis. Sonja was genuinely out there, wherever that might be. There was something about the way she moved, the way she handled herself, which suggested she was plugged into something Real. And as frustrating as her fits of mood might be, he could not bring himself to turn his back on her and walk away. Still, it bothered him that none of his friends liked her—not even Arlo, whom he’d known since high school. In fact, some even seemed to be scared of her. Funny. How could anyone be frightened of Sonja?

As he shuffled in the direction of the bathroom, he noticed he had a new email message on his laptop. He paused to check it, only to freeze upon seeing the all-too-familiar email address in his inbox.

Brittany.

Probably another one of her psycho love letters, threatening him with castration while begging him to take her back. Lately, she’d taken to leaving rambling, wigged-out messages on his voice mail, ranting about Sonja being some sort of vampire or succubus out to steal his soul. Crazy bitch.

Judd hit a button on the laptop keyboard, consigning the message, unread, to the trash folder and staggered off to the bathroom to take a shower.

Sonja greeted the night from atop the roof of the warehouse, stretching her arms as if to embrace the rising moon. She listened with half an ear to the sound of the baying dogs along the riverbanks. Some, she knew, were not dogs. But the vargr were not her concern. She had tangled with a few werewolves over the years, but she preferred hunting her own kind as she found it far more satisfying.

The warehouse’s exterior fire escape was badly rusted and groaned noisily with the slightest movement, so she made a point to avoid it. Instead, she crawled, head-first, down the side of the building, moving like a lizard on a garden wall. Once she was within ten feet of the alleyway, she jumped down, pausing to pat-checked her pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out during her descent.

There was a sudden hissing sound in her head as if someone had pumped up the volume on a radio tuned to a dead channel, just as something heavy caught her between the shoulder blades, knocking her into a row of garbage cans. She barely had time to roll out of the way before something silvery smashed down where her head had been a second before. She coughed, and black blood flew from her lips; a rib had broken off and pierced her lung again.

Brittany stood over her, clutching a three-foot high, solid silver altar cross like a baseball bat. Even though her attacker’s madness gave her strength, Sonja could tell the damn thing was heavy. She wondered which parish church she’d stolen it from.

The dead channel-crackling in Sonja’s head grew louder. It was the sound of the homicidal rage radiating from Brittany. Shrieking incoherently, the madwoman swung at her again. Sonja quickly got to her feet in one swift, fluid motion. While crosses and crucifixes had no effect on her— or any vampire, for that matter—a snapped spine or broken neck would still prove fatal to her. Brittany struck at her one more time, but Sonja stepped inside her reach and grabbed the cross, wresting it from her hands.

Brittany staggered back, staring in disbelief as Sonja hefted the silver-plated cross. No doubt her attacker was waiting for her to burst into flames, just like in the movies.

“What the hell did you think you were going to solve, clobbering me with this piece of junk?” she snarled.

Brittany’s eyes were huge, the pupils swimming in madness. “You can’t have him! I won’t let you take his soul!”

“You mean Judd?” Sonja frowned.

“He’s mine!” Brittany screeched, launching herself at Sonja, her fingers hooked into claws. “Be belongs to me!”

Sonja instinctively swatted her attack aside with the hand holding the altar piece.

Brittany dropped to the alley floor, her head hanging at an impossible angle as the febrile madness drained from her eyes. No need to check for vital signs. The girl was d-e-a-d.

Way to go, kiddo! You just killed lover-boys bug-shit ex-girlfriend! The Other crowed in amused delight. You’re batting a thousand! Pun intended.

Sonja groaned in annoyance as she tossed the cross. She couldn’t toss the corpse in the dumpster; someone was bound to find it. Once the body was identified, the cops would drag Judd in for questioning, which meant they’d come looking for her, sooner or later. And she couldn’t have that.

I’ve got an idea, crooned the Other. I know how you can get rid of her. It’ll be like she never existed at all…

Stealing the car was easy. It was a twenty year old Ford sedan with a muffler held in place with baling wire and a faded Duke for Governor sticker on the sagging rear bumper. It was the perfect vehicle for disposing of a murder victim in the surrounding swamps during the dead of night.

She took an exit off the highway that went through what was left of New Orleans East, a sprawling area east of downtown, which had been slammed hard by the floodwaters of Katrina. Now it was a shadow of its former self, with huge swathes of demolished and abandoned homes. She drove without headlights, not that she needed them. She could see just fine in the dark, even with her sunglasses. The road she was on had once been a cookie-cutter development built on the very fringes of the marshlands. Now all it was visible were overgrown concrete slabs where the houses once stood. What had once been suburbia was now a breeding ground for snakes and alligators.

Upon reaching her destination, she cut the engine and rolled to a stop. She climbed out of the car and opened the trunk with a length of bent coat hanger. She stood for a second, doing a silent inventory of the plastic trash bags. There were six, total: one for the head, one for the torso, and one for each limb. She’d already burned Brittany’s clothing in the warehouse furnace and disposed of her jewelry by tossing it into the river.

She gathered up the bags and left the road, heading in the direction of the swamp. She could hear things splashing in the water, some of them quite large. She paused for a second on the bank of the bayou. Something in the darkness hissed like a steam valve. She tossed the bag containing Brittany’s head into the murky water.

“Come and get it!” she called.

The gators splashed and wrestled amongst themselves for the tender morsels like ducks fighting for scraps of stale bread.

Sonja was tired. She still had to drive the car she’d stolen to a suitable area and set it on fire. She looked down at her hands. They were streaked with blood. She absently licked them clean.

When she was finished cleaning herself, the Other looked through her eyes and smiled.

The Other wasn’t tired.

Not in the least.

It had been a shitty night, as far as Judd was concerned: he’d gotten chewed out at work; Arlo and the others had treated him like he had a championship case of halitosis; and, to cap off the evening, Sonja had decided to pull a no-show.

It was four o’clock when he got home. He was in such a piss-poor mood he didn’t even bother to turn on the lights. His laptop, for once, didn’t have one of Brittany’s bizarre emails waiting for him in its inbox. But neither was there anything from Sonja, either.

He grunted as he removed his shirt. Was she mad at him? Had he said or done something the last time they were together that ticked her off? It was damn hard to figure out her moods since she refused to take off those damn mirrored sunglasses. He wondered how she could navigate in the dark so well while wearing those fuckers.

Something moved at the corner of his eye, flickering white and pale like a ghost. It was the lace curtain that hung over the window that faced the alley. Funny, he didn’t remember leaving the window open...

A figure stepped out of the shadows, greeting him with a smile that displayed teeth that were disturbingly sharp. Judd felt his heart jerk into overdrive as the adrenaline surged into his system. He almost yelped in alarm before he recognized her.

“Sonja?”

“Did I scare you?” Her voice was hoarse and ragged, like something out of The Exorcist. She sniffed the air and her smile grew even sharper. “Yes, I did scare you. I can smell it.” She moved toward him, her hands making slow, hypnotic passes as she spoke. “I love the scent of fear in the morning.”

“Sonja, what’s wrong? What happened to your voice?”

“Wrong?” The Other chuckled. “I always sound like this!”

She was on him so fast he didn’t even see her move, lifting him by his belt buckle and flinging him onto the bed. She grabbed his jaw in one hand, angling it back to expose the jugular. Judd heard the snikt! of a switchblade and felt a cold, sharp pressure against his throat.

“What are you doing—?” he gasped.

“Do not struggle. Do not cry out. Do as I command, and I’ll let you live. Maybe.”

“What do you want?”

“Why, my dear, I just want to get to know you.” The Other replied, removing the sunglasses protecting her eyes.

Judd often wondered what Sonja’s eyes looked like. Were they almond-shaped or round? Blue? Brown? Green? Whatever their color, he had always imagined them as being human. He never once pictured them as blood-red with dilated pupils the size of buttons.

The Other smirked, savoring the look of shocked disgust on Judd’s face. She pressed her lips against his, thrusting his teeth apart with her tongue, and penetrated his will with one quick shove of her mind.

Judd’s limbs twitched convulsively as she took control of his nervous system. He couldn’t move as his body was locked into paralysis. The Other reached out and pinched one of his exposed nipples. Judd didn’t flinch. Satisfied her mastery over him was secure; the Other moved the switchblade from his throat.

“I can see why she finds you attractive. You’re a pretty thing...very pretty. But she’s much too old-fashioned when it comes to sex, don’t you agree? She’s afraid to let herself go and walk the wild side. She’s so repressed.” The Other shrugged out of her leather jacket, allowing it to fall to the floor. “I will explain this to you once, and once only. I own you. If you do as I tell you, and you please me, then you shall be rewarded: like this.”

She reached into his mind and tweaked its pleasure center. Judd shuddered as the wave of ecstasy swept over him, his hips involuntarily humping empty air.

“But if you fight me, or displease me in anyway—then I will punish you: like so.”

Judd emitted a strangled cry of pain as he was speared through the pain receptor in his head. His back arched like an electro-shock patient’s. It felt as if the top of his skull had been removed, and someone had dumped the contents of an ant farm on his exposed brain. Then the pain stopped as quickly as it had begun.

“Hold me,” The Other commanded.

Judd did as he was told, dragging himself upright and wrapping his arms around her waist. The Other knotted her fingers in his hair, pulling his head back so she could look into his eyes.

“Am I hurting you? Say yes.”

“Yes,” he replied obediently.

“Good.”

The Other smiled then, exposing her fangs. That’s when Judd realized that it was just beginning.

They fucked for three hours, the Other skillfully manipulating Judd’s pleasure centers so that he remained perpetually erect, despite his exhaustion. She randomly rewarded him with psychic orgasms. He stopped counting after five. She seemed to enjoy his wails each time he underwent a spasm.

She finally severed her control of Judd’s body just as the sun began to rise. He fell away from her in mid-thrust, his eyes rolled back behind flickering lids. The Other dressed quickly, staring at Judd as he lay curled in a fetal position amongst the soiled and tangled bedclothes, his naked body shuddering and jerking as his nervous system reasserted its control.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” she purred, caressing his shivering flank.

Judd gasped at her touch but did not pull away from her touch.

“You pleased me. This time. So I will let you live. This time.” The Other lowered her mouth to his throat, brushing his jugular lightly with her lips. Judd squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of the bite. But instead she whispered: “Get used to it.”

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

The Other took a great deal of pleasure in revealing to Sonja what it had been done to Judd, making sure not to leave out a single, tasty detail as it re-ran that morning’s exploits inside their shared skull.

Sonja’s response was to scream and run head-first into the nearest wall. She then continued pounding her head against the floorboards until her sunglasses shattered and blood streamed down her face. She succeeded in breaking her nose and shattering both cheekbones before finally collapsing.

Chapter Six

“Girly-girl! Long time no see! What brings you into my little den of iniquity?”

This time the demon Malfeis was dressed in the body of a flabby white male in late middle-age, wearing a loud plaid polyester leisure suit with white buck loafers. A collection of gold medallions dangled under his chins, and he held a racing form in one hand.

Sonja slid into the booth opposite the demon. “I need magic, Mal.”

“Don’t we all? Say, what’s that with the face? You can reconstruct better than that...!”

She shrugged, one hand straying to her swollen left cheek. The bone squelched under her fingertips and slid slightly askew. Heavy-duty facial reconstruction required feeding in order for it to be done right, and she’d deliberately skipped her waking meal.

“You tangle with an ogre? Or was it one of those vargr punks passing through town?”

“Leave it be, Mal.”

Malfeis shrugged. “Just trying to be friendly, that’s all. Now, what kind of magic are you in the market for?”

“Binding and containment.”

The demon grunted and fished out a pocket calculator, his exterior flickering for a moment to reveal a hulking creature that resembled an orangutan with a boar’s snout. “What kind of demon are you looking to put in lock down?”

“I wish to have myself bound and contained.”

Malfeis looked up from his estimate, for once genuinely surprised by a client’s request. “That’s highly...unorthodox.”

“Name your price, damn you.”

“Don’t be redundant, girlchick,” the demon snorted.

Sonja sighed and hefted a knapsack onto the tabletop. “I’ve got hair shaved from Bundy’s head just before he went to the chair, dried blood scraped from the walls of Dahmer’s apartment, a spent rifle casing from the grassy knoll, and John Wayne Gacey’s handcuffs. Quality shit. And all yours, if you do this for me.”

Malfeis fidgeted, drumming his talons against the table. Such proximity to so much human evil was giving him a hell of a jones.

“Okay, I’ll do it. But I’m not going to take responsibility for anything that happens.”

“Did I ask you to?”

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, Sonja?”

“Your concern touches me, Mal.”

The demon shook his head in disbelief. “You really mean to go through with this, don’t you?”

“I’ve already said as much, haven’t I?”

“Sonja, you understand once you’re in there, there’s no way you’ll be able to get out, unless someone breaks the seal.”

“Perhaps.”

“There’s no ‘perhaps’ to it!” he snapped. “I know my shit.”

“The spell you’re using is for the binding and containment of vampires, right?”

“Of course,” he replied. “You’re a vampire.”

“Only part of me,” she reminded him. “And I’m not going to let it hurt anyone ever again. I’m going to destroy it or die trying.”

“You’re going to starve in there!”

“That’s the whole point.”

“Whatever you say, girly-girl,” Malfeis sighed.

Sonja nodded as she stared into the open doorway of the meat locker. It was cold and dark inside, just like her heart. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Malfeis produced a number of candles, bottles of oil, pieces of black chalk and bags of white powder from the bag he carried with him. Sonja swallowed and stepped inside the freezer, pulling the heavy door closed behind her with a muffled thump.

The demon lit the candles and began to chant in a deep, sonorous voice, scrawling elaborate designs on the outer walls of the meat locker with the black chalk. As the chanting grew faster and more impassioned, he smeared oil on the door. There was an electric crackle as the hinges and handle suddenly glowed with blue fire.

Malfeis’ incantation lost all semblance of human speech as he carefully poured a line of white powder, made from equal parts salt, sand, and the crushed bones of infants, across the threshold. Then he stepped back to assess his handiwork.

To human eyes, it simply looked like someone had scrawled graffiti all over the stainless steel locker, nothing more. But to Pretender eyes, the door to the locker was barred by a tangle of darkly pulsing vévé, the semi-sentient protective symbols of the voodoo powers. As long as the tableau remained undisturbed, the entity known as Sonja Blue would remain trapped within.

Malfeis neatly replaced the tools of his trade in the bag. He then paused as he left the warehouse, glancing over his shoulder one last time.

“Goodbye, girly-girl. It was nice knowing you.”

“I’m looking for Mal.”

The bartender looked up from drying a beer mug with a dirty rag. After taking in the young man’s unwashed hair and four days’ growth of beard, he nodded in the direction of the back booth.

Judd had never been inside the Monastery before. It had a reputation as being one of the sleazier French Quarter dives, which was actually saying something. The booths lining the walls had once been church pews, and plaster saints in various stages of decay were scattered about the room. A Virgin Mary with peeling skin regarded him from above the bar with flat, faded blue eyes. In her arms was an equally scabrous Baby Jesus, its uplifted chubby arms ending in misshapen stumps. The whole place smelled distinctly of old beer, new piss, and decay.

He walked to the back of the bar and looked into the last booth and saw a paunchy middle-aged man dressed in a bad suit smoking a cigar and reading a racing form.

“Excuse me...?”

The man in the bad suit glanced up at him, arching a bushy eyebrow. “Yeah?”

“I’m looking for Mal—?”

“You found him.”

Judd blinked in confusion. “I’m afraid there’s been some sort of mistake. The guy I’m looking for is black, with dreadlocks...”

The man in the bad suit smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. “Sit down, kid. He’ll be with you in just a bit.”

Still uncertain, Judd went ahead and slid into the opposite side of the booth.

The older man lowered his head, exposing male pattern baldness, and hunched his shoulders. His fingers and arms began to vibrate, the skin growing darker as if his entire body had suddenly become bruised. There was a sound of dry grass rustling under a high wind and thick, black dreadlocks emerged from his scalp, whipping about like a nest of snakes. Judd was too shocked by the transformation to do anything but stare.

Mal lifted his head and grinned at Judd, tugging at the collar of his turtleneck. “Ah, yes. I remember you now. You're Sonja’s Renfield.”

“M-my name’s not Renfield,” he stammered.

Mal shrugged his indifference. “So, what brings you here, boychik?”

“I’m looking for Sonja. I can’t find her.”

“That’s because she doesn’t want to be found.”

“I have to find her! I have to! Before she does something stupid. Maybe even kills herself.”

Mal regarded the young human with interest. “Tell me more.”

“Something—happened between us. She feels responsible for hurting me. She sent me this letter a few days ago.” Judd fished a folded piece of paper out of his back pocket. “Here, you read it.”

The demon unfolded the paper, noting that it was a printout of an email message.

I can never be forgiven for what was done to you. I was not the one who did those things. Please believe that. It was her. She is the one that makes me hurt people. I promise I’ll never let her hurt anyone, ever again. Especially you. I‘'m going to try something I should have done years ago before she became so strong. She’s sated right now. She’ll stay asleep in my head for awhile. By the time she becomes aware of what I’m planning to do, it’ll be too late. I’m going to kill her. I might end up killing myself in the bargain, but that’s a chance I’m willing to take. I’m not going to let her hurt anyone again, damn her. I love you, Judd. Please understand that. Don’t try to find me. Escape while you can.

“She doesn’t understand.” Judd was close to tears as he spoke. “I do forgive her! I love her, damn it!”

“You know what she is,” Malfeis said flatly.

Judd nodded. “Yes, and I don’t care.”

“And why have you come to me?”

“You know where I can find her, don’t you?”

Malfeis shifted in his seat, his eyes abruptly developing reptilian slits. “Are you asking me where she is?”

Judd hesitated as he recalled Sonja’s warning that he should never, under any circumstance, ask Mal a question. “Uh, yeah.”

Mal smiled, displaying shark’s teeth. “Before I reply, you must pay the price of the answer. Is that understood, boychik?”

Judd swallowed and nodded.

“Very well. Tell me your name. All of it.”

“Michael Judd Rieser. Is that it? That’s all you want? My name?”

“To know a thing’s name gives one power over that thing, my sweet. Didn’t they teach you that in school?”

“What about my question? Do you know where Sonja is?”

“Yes, I do know.” The demon scrawled an address on the back of the letter Judd had given him. “You’ll find her here. She’s inside the meat locker on the ground floor.”

“Meat locker?”

“I wouldn’t open it if I were you.”

Judd snatched up the address and slid out of the booth. “But I’m not you, buddy!”

Malfeis watched the young man hurry out of the bar with an amused grin. “That’s what you think, boychik.” He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, he had shoulder-length hair pulled back in a ponytail, an acrylic plug in his ear lobe, and four days’ growth of beard on his jaw.

Chapter Seven

It was cold. So very, very cold.

Sonja sat huddled in the far corner of the meat locker, her knees drawn up to her chest. Her breath drifted from her mouth and nostrils in wispy plumes before condensing and turning to frost on her face.

How long? How many days had she been here? Three? Four? Twenty? A hundred? There was no way of telling. She no longer slept. The Other’s screams and curses kept her awake.

Let me out! Let me out of this hell-hole! I’ve got to feed! I’m starving!

“Good.”

You stupid cunt! If I starve to death, you go with me! I’m not a damned tapeworm!

“Couldn’t prove it by me.”

I’m getting out of here! I don’t care what you say!

Sonja did not fight The Other as it asserted its ascendancy over her body, forcing her stiffened limbs to bend, levering her onto her feet. Her joints cracked like rotten timber as she moved. She staggered in the direction of the door. In her weakened condition, she had difficulty seeing in the pitch black of the meat locker. She had abandoned the sunglasses some time ago, but as her condition worsened, so did her night-vision.

Her groping hands closed on the door’s inside handle. There was a sharp crackle and a flash of blue light as The Other was thrown halfway across the locker. She screamed and writhed like a cat hit by a car, holding her blistered and smoking hands away from her body. This was the twentieth time she’d tried to open the door, and most of her fingers were on the verge of gangrene.

“You’re not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever!” She shouted at The Other.

Fuck you! Fuck you! I’ll get you for this, you human-loving cow!

“What? Are you going to kill me?”

Sonja crawled back to her place in the corner. The effort started her coughing again, bringing up black, clotted blood. She wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket, nearly dislocating her jaw in the process.

You’re falling apart. You’re too weak to regenerate properly...

“You’re the one who pounded your head against the fuckin’ wall trying to get out in the first place,” she reminded her unseen passenger.

Yeah, but you’re the one that got us locked up in here! Don’t blame me!

“I am blaming you. But not for that.”

It’s that stupid fucking human again! You think you can punish me for that? I didn’t do anything that you hadn’t already fantasized about!

“You raped him, damn you! You almost killed him!”

I didn’t, though. I could have. But I didn’t.

I love him!” Sonja’s voice cracked and became a sob.

You don’t love him. You love being mistaken for human. That’s what you’re angry about; not that I molested your precious lover boy, but that I ruined your little game of Let’s Pretend!

“Shut up.”

Make me.

Judd checked the street number of the abandoned warehouse against the address that Mal had given him. This was the place. It was one of the few remaining buildings in the Central Business District that had not been turned into trendy yuppie condo-apartments. There was a small, hand-printed sign posted on the front door that read ‘Indigo Imports’, but nothing else. A heavy chain and double padlock secured the entrance and all the ground floor windows had burglar bars. There had to be some way of getting in and out.

He rounded the side of the building and spotted the loading dock. After several minutes of determined tugging, he succeeded in wrenching one of the sliding metal doors open wide enough for him to crawl under. The interior was lit by mid-afternoon sunlight slanting through the barred windows, and the place smelled of dust and rat piss.

The meat locker was on the ground floor, just where Mal said it would be. Its metal walls and door were covered in swirls of spray painted graffiti. What looked like a huge pile of salt marked the locker’s threshold. Judd grabbed the door’s handle and yanked it open. There was a faint crackling sound and a rush of cold, foul air. He squinted into the darkness, breathing through his mouth to mask the stench.

“Sonja?”

Something moved in the deepest shadows of the freezer. “J-Judd? Is that you?” It was Sonja’s voice, but far weaker than he had ever heard it.

“It’s me, baby. I’ve come to get you out of here.”

“Go away. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

He stepped into the locker, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He could see her now, crouching in the far corner with her knees drawn up against her chest, her face turned to the wall.

“No, you’re wrong, Sonja. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

“I let her hurt you, Judd. I could have stopped her, but I didn’t. I let her—let her—” Her voice grew tight, and her shoulders began to shake. She smelled like a side of beef gone bad. Her hands were covered with blisters and oozing sores. Some of the fingers jutted at odd angles as if she’d broken them and they had healed without being correctly set. “Go away, Judd. Go away before I hurt you again.” As he knelt beside her, she pulled away at his touch, pressing herself against the wall as if she could somehow squeeze between the cracks. “Don’t look at me.”

“Sonja, you don’t understand. I love you. I know what you are, what you’re capable of—and I love you anyway.’“

“Even if I hurt you?”

“Especially when you hurt me.”

She turned to look at him. Her face appeared as if it had been smashed with a hammer then reassembled by a well-meaning, but inept, plastic surgeon that only had a blurry photograph to go by. Her eyes glowed like those of an animal pinned in the headlights of an on-coming car.

“What did you say?” She whispered.

Judd leaned closer, his eyes reflecting a hunger she knew all too well. “At first I was scared. Then, after awhile, I realized I wasn’t frightened anymore. I was actually getting into it. It was like the barriers between pain and pleasure, animal and human, ecstasy and horror, had been removed! I’ve never known anything like it before! It was incredible! I love you, Sonja! All of you!”

She reached out and caressed his face with one of her charred hands. “I love you too, Judd. Kiss me.”

Sonja sat behind the wheel of the car for a long time, staring out into the darkness beyond the windshield. She pressed her fingertips against her right cheek, and this time it held. Her fingers were healed and straight again. She readjusted her shades and opened the car door, sliding out from behind the wheel of the used Cadillac she’d bought off the lot, cash-in-hand.

Judd was in the trunk, divvied up into six garbage bags, just like Brittany. At least it had bee fast. Her hunger was so intense she drained him within seconds. He hadn’t tried to fight when she buried her fangs in his throat, even though she didn’t have the strength to trance him. Maybe part of him knew she was doing him a favor.

She dragged the bags out of the trunk and headed in the direction of the alligator calls. She’d have to leave New Orleans, perhaps for good this time. Brittany might not have been missed, but Judd was another story. Arlo was sure to mention his friend’s weirdo new girlfriend to the authorities.

It was time to blow town and pay Palmer a visit. She’d forgotten about him during all this. Of all her human companions, he was the one she’d come the closest to loving. Before Judd, that is.

Sonja hurled the sacks containing her lover’s remains into the water and returned to the vehicle. She tried not to hear the noise the gators made as they fought amongst themselves.

She climbed back into the car and plugged her iPod into the sound system. The Dead Kennedys California Über Alles thundered through the speakers, causing the steering wheel to vibrate under her hands.

She wondered when the emptiness would go away—or at least be replaced by pain. Anything would be preferable to the nothing she felt inside her.

I don’t see why you had to go and kill him like that. We could have used another Renfield. They do come in handy, now and then. Besides, he was kind of cute...

“Shut up and drive,” she snarled to herself.

Chapter Eight

It was late afternoon, sliding toward evening, and Palmer was out in the courtyard, hammering together a shipping crate for a collection of the hand-painted Day of the Dead masks. The masks—made of papier-mâché and painted in primary colors so bright he could still see them when he closed his eyes—were piled in a small heap nearby, grimacing blindly at the failing sun.

Palmer dropped his hammer and straightened up, massaging his lower back. He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and mopped his brow. God, he hated this part of the business. Building the crates for shipping was a relatively minor hassle, but it was loading up the Land Rover and going into the city that was the real ball-buster. Still, the pay was pretty good, and money went a lot further in Yucatan than it did back in the US.

Looking down, his gaze fell across the masks in their nest of excelsior. He’d bought them as part of a larger job lot from a family of artisans who had been producing carnival decorations for over four generations. Until now, he hadn’t paid that much attention to them. He shifted through the group, studying the workmanship. Most of the masks were small, designed to cover the face of a child.

All of the traditional carnival personae were represented: skeletons, their teeth bared in aggressive, lipless grins; jaguars with broom-straw whiskers bristling from snarling muzzles; blood-red devils with grease-pencil mustaches, shoe-polish goatees and licorice-black horns jutting from their foreheads; and grinning clowns with hooked noses and jutting chins, like the ancient Punch puppets of Europe. Less typical false faces were also included: a sheep’s head with wool cunningly made from balls of cotton; a wolf, fangs bared in a predatory snarl; a rooster caught in mid-crow, its beak open and throat sac extended. Palmer chuckled to himself as he sifted through the empty masks, remembering Halloweens spent dressed as a pirate, a cowboy, a spaceman, and other exotic professions.

Then he found the black mask.

It was at the very bottom of the pile. He frowned as he picked it up, turning it over in his hands. Like the others, it was papier-mâché. Unlike the others, it was adult-sized. And, except for the eyeholes, it was without features of any kind. There were no over-exaggerated human or animal characteristics, merely an oval painted black and coated with several layers of varnish so that it shone like a scarab’s carapace. There was something oddly compelling about the mask that made him set it aside from the others as he loaded them into their crate.

It was dusk by the time he finished driving the last nail into place. He tossed the hammer back into the toolbox and stepped back to judge his handiwork. He heard a boot heel scraped behind him. He instantly froze. Whoever it was could not be human, or else he would have heard their thoughts long before they reached the front door.

As he prepared to launch a psychic strike against the invader, he heard a familiar laugh.

“Hello, Bill. Did you miss me?’

Sonja stood there looking tired, her leather jacket powdered with road dust, her mirrored shades equally grimy. In one hand she held a battered black nylon duffel bag, in the other a neatly wrapped present bound with colored twine. She smiled tightly, as if the corners of her mouth were being pulled by fishhooks. Her head was surrounded by a blackish-red halo that pulsated like a lava lamp, indicating that The Other was far more active than usual. Palmer tried not to let his dismay taint his own aura.

He hugged her, and for a moment her shoulders quivered as if struggling to shrug off an invisible burden.

“Auntie Blue!” Lethe bounded onto the patio, grinning broadly. Dressed in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle T-shirt and a pair of bright yellow stirrup pants, she could have passed for a typical child— save for her golden, pupil-less eyes. Shambling in her wake was Fido.

The seraph hesitated at the sight of Sonja. Although Palmer seldom could read the seraph’s aura, he knew that it, too, was disturbed by the Other’s activity.

Sonja smiled at the sight of her godchild, the stress draining from her face, and dropped down on one knee, opening her arms wide. “C’mere and give me a hug, sweetie!”

Lethe shot into Sonja’s arms like an arrow, clinging to her tightly. “Are you staying this time, Auntie Blue? Are you staying for good?’

“Maybe not for good, but at least for a while,” Sonja replied. “Here, let me have a look at you. You’ve grown, child!”

“Eighteen inches in the last six months,” Palmer confirmed with a mixture of pride and concern.

“Did you bring me something, Auntie Blue?” Lethe asked expectantly.

Sonja laughed and ruffled the child’s dark hair. “Here you go, darling. I just hope you haven’t gotten too big for dolls.”

“I’ll never be too big for dolls!” Lethe assured her. “They’re my babies!”

Palmer stepped forward, gently nudging Lethe in the direction of the house. “Honey, why don’t you and Fido go play with your new doll? Auntie Blue and I have some things to talk about. And tell her thank you for the gift.”

“Okay, Daddy! Thank you, Auntie!’

Sonja watched as Lethe skipped away, Fido lumbering after her like a demented pull-toy. “She’s tall, Bill. Way too tall for thirty months.”

“You’re telling me? That’s why I’ve been trying to get you to come home. We need to figure out what to do with her.”

It was several hours before they could be alone. First Palmer prepared dinner for Lethe and himself, and then it was time for baths and bedtime stories. It was well after ten o’clock before he finally joined Sonja on the front porch. He found her curled up in the hammock, watching the night sky. She was still wearing her sunglasses.

“I brought some refreshments,” he said, holding up a spliff the size of a cigar. “Any room there for me?’

“Of course,’ Sonja smiled, moving over so he could join her.

Palmer fired up the joint and inhaled deeply, pulling the smoke deep into his lungs. As he exhaled, he lifted his arm and Sonja flowed into its hollow like a shadow, one cheek pressed against his breastbone. They lay there for a long moment, Palmer idly stroking her hair. After a long moment, he finally spoke.

“Things are getting weird.”

Sonja lifted her head and gave him a quizzical look. “I thought everything had been weird for some time now?”

“This stuff with Lethe is starting to creep me out. I don’t know what to expect from her one day to the next! A year ago she looked like she was ready for kindergarten, now she looks like she should be ready for middle school!’

“Is she giving you problems?”

“No, she’s a good kid. A little rambunctious at times, but she’s no real trouble. But she’s starting to want to go with me to the city. She’s becoming curious about the outside world. We can’t keep her hidden away forever, Sonja.”

“We can’t risk Morgan finding out about her,” Sonja replied firmly. “I promised her parents I’d never let Lethe fall into that bastard’s hands. There’s no telling what he’d do if Morgan knew she was alive.”

“I understand that, Sonja. It’s just that, well, it’s not natural for a kid to be alone like she is. All she has in the way of playmates are me and Fido, and occasionally you. That’s hardly what I’d call a well-rounded atmosphere.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Sonja asked, shrugging her shoulders. “I know about as much about what Lethe really is as you do. Hell, you’re the one who actually takes care of her on a day-to-day basis. As far as I can tell, Lethe’s a healthy little girl who just happens to be somewhat...advanced for her age. There’s nothing either of us can do except try and take care of her and wait to see what will happen. And as for her having playmates... well, Fido will have to do for the time being. At least she isn’t being raised by a lousy TV set!”

Palmer took another hit, offering the joint to Sonja, who shook her head. “So, how was New Orleans?”

Her body tensed, like a cat preparing to jump. “Fine; why do you ask?”

“Just curious, that’s all. That’s where we first met, after all. Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.’

“Hey, what’s wrong? You’re really tense. It feels like I’m cuddling an ironing board!’

“Sorry,” Sonja muttered, pulling away from him. “I guess I’m not ready to relax yet. It’s just that I...” She let the sentence trail off.

“Did something happen in New Orleans?”

Sonja turned her mirrored gaze away from him. “I had some trouble with the Other. Bad stuff.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

Sonja frowned and shook her head.

Palmer stubbed out his joint as he prepared to climb free of the hammock. “I better go check on Lethe...”

Sonja touched his arm. “No, I’ll do it. You stay here.”

Palmer shrugged and settled back. “Bring me back a beer, okay?”

“Sure thing.” As she got up, she turned to fix Palmer with her unreadable gaze. “Do you love me?”

Palmer looked up at her, somewhat taken aback by the question. She rarely spoke the word ‘love’ with her mouth. “Of course!” he replied with a surprised laugh.

“Why?”

Palmer blinked, his smile slowly falling away. “I just do.”

She paused for a moment, as if weighing his answer. “I’ll be back with your beer in a few minutes.”

Palmer sat in the hammock under the starlit sky, listening to the calls of the night birds, and wondered exactly what the hell had gone down in New Orleans.

The door to Lethe’s bedroom was slightly ajar, allowing light from the hall to filter in, so she wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night and be alone in the dark. Sonja was uncertain whether Lethe was actually scared of the dark or not, but it seemed the proper thing to do.

Sonja stuck her head inside the door, her eyes automatically adjusting to the dim light. Lethe lay on her side, her back to the door, surrounded by a small village of dolls and stuffed toys, her bedclothes kicked onto the floor. Sonja stepped inside, quiet as a shadow, and stooped to retrieve the discarded covers. As she straightened up, she saw something moving out of the corner of her eye.

Fido had shifted from his sentinel position at the foot of the bed, his eyes glowing like molten ore. Although she knew the seraph meant no harm, Sonja felt the hair on her scalp prickle, and she had to fight to keep from growling.

Just then Lethe rolled over and opened her eyes, smiling beatifically. “Don’t be scared, Auntie Blue. Fido’s just protecting’ me.”

“Why should he have to protect you from me? I’d never hurt you, sweetie.’

“I know, Auntie Blue. But the Other would. It wants to hurt me right now, doesn’t it?”

Smart little freak, the Other snarled inside Sonja’s mind.

“I would never let it harm you, Lethe,” Sonja replied reassuringly. “You know that.”

“I know, Auntie Blue. But Fido doesn’t.”

Palmer started from a light doze as Sonja pressed a Tecate, still dripping ice from the cooler, into his hand. He jerked awake like a science-lab frog zapped by a dry-cell battery. “What—? Oh, thanks.” He tilted the bottle back for a quick slug.

Sonja straddled him as he lay in the hammock. Save for her sunglasses, she was now naked. She perched atop his crotch, the moonlight outlining her body in silver and shadow. Her breasts were full, her stomach and thighs taut. Palmer set aside his beer and reached up with a damp hand to tweak her nipples. They were cool and hard between his fingers, like smooth little stones.

She reached down with one hand and yanked open his denim shirt as if it was made of newspaper, sending buttons flying in every direction. Lowering herself atop him, she slid her legs down his, wrapping her arms around his neck. Palmer caressed her naked hips, and she moved to fill his hand, like a cat eager to be stroked. A heady rush of arousal and fear surged through him, as it always did before their lovemaking.

On an intellectual level, Palmer knew the beautiful creature before him was as deadly as a cobra, yet he trusted her not to kill him. His physical excitement came from the knowledge that, at any given moment, she could tear him apart like fresh bread.

He closed his eyes as Sonja took him into her mouth, exhaling a long sigh as he felt the curvature of her fangs glide against his skin. A sane man would go limp knowing razor-sharp teeth encircled him, but Palmer hadn’t been truly sane in a long, long time.. Trembling, he pulled her away from his crotch, gasping as he fought to regain control.

She moved quickly, lowering herself onto him before he could protest. He reached up to cup her breasts and, with an upward thrust of his hips, penetrated both her body and her mind.

To tell the truth, whenever she was gone he missed the psychic bonding far more than the physical act of sex. He could always jerk off while she was gone, but there was no such thing as masturbatory telepathy. And without further effort, he surrendered all thought and self, all barriers dissolving with the bond between them.

Once again Palmer found himself in the other place he and Sonja shared during their trysts. He walked through a gray space that was neither air nor water, uncertain whether he was flying or swimming. It was warm and comforting, as he imagined the womb to be. Sonja emerged from the gray, as swift and sure as a shark in its element, her hair trailing behind her like jet exhaust. She wrapped herself around Palmer, her arms and legs impossibly long and tapered, looking more like an Impressionistic nude than a flesh-and-blood woman.

He wrapped his own limbs about her, pulling her into himself. Thoughts and emotions jittered between them like static electricity as they merged. This sharing of self and experience, more than anything else, was how they managed to ‘catch up’ with one another after so many months apart. She flowed into him and he into her.

Missed you…

Need you...

Love you...

Worried...

Gone so long...

Love you...

Judd...

Judd?

Suddenly Palmer was plummeting through space as if he had stepped from the lip of a cliff into the deepest, darkest pit in the Carlsbad Cavern. It was as if he was spiraling down into the mouth of hell itself. The transition was so sudden he didn’t even have the time to scream for his life.

He hit hard, but because he was not a physical thing, there were no broken bones. He groaned and got to his feet, surveying his new surroundings. The first thing he felt was the wind, cutting into him like a flaying knife. He was in the middle of a vast arctic ice field. A dark, moon-haunted sky hung overhead. In the far distance, he could make out the humps of vast glacier-bound mountains. As he turned around, shuddering in the frigid wind, he marveled at the frozen desolation surrounding him. There was nothing but an empty tract of ice, gleaming blackly in the moonlight.

Sonja?

His telepathic call echoed across the frozen sea, unanswered.

SONJA!

Nothing moved or waved or responded to his cry.

Exasperated, Palmer struck off in the direction of the full moon on the horizon. He didn’t know why—it simply seemed like the thing to do. He had never gotten lost inside anyone before. At least he assumed the ice-bound tundra was Sonja’s mental construct, not his own. In any case, he would have to rely on his instincts if he wanted to get out of this mess.

The ice was smooth beneath his feet and at least ten feet thick, but he didn’t have any trouble moving across the glasslike surface. He had gone a mile, possibly more before realizing he was being followed. Not by someone walking behind him—but by something travelling below the ice.

At first it looked to be a black, amorphous shadow, gliding beneath the thick layer of ice. Palmer remembered a nature documentary he’d once seen, where a killer whale had stalked a seal sunning itself on an ice floe, and had smashed its way through to snatch the hapless beast and drag it to its death. Struggling to remain calm, he reminded himself that, in reality, he was nowhere near the Arctic Circle, and whatever it was lurking beneath the ice, it most certainly wasn’t a killer whale.

Marshaling his courage, he dropped to his knees, wiping at the fine layer of dry snow covering the ice with numbed hands, peering intently at the thing trapped beneath. Twin fires blinked on underneath the ice, glowing like embers lost from hell’s furnace. Only then did Palmer understand what he’d stumbled across. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but it was too late. The Other knew he was there—and unprotected.

A pair of arms burst through the ice floe, the skin as blue and cold as turquoise. The hands were those of a crone, with hooked cracked nails. They flailed about blindly, seeking purchase on the slippery surface, as The Other pulled itself free of its frozen grave, like a woman wriggling out of a girdle.

After the arms came the head, her hair transformed into a dark sunburst by the rapidly forming icicles. Her eyes burned with an unending anger, and her lips seemed obscenely full, like freshly fed leeches, as they pulled back into a predator’s grin, revealing the teeth of a killing thing. As demonic as The Other’s features were, there was a horrible familiarity about them— like those of a loved one in a picture torn to shreds and pasted back together by inexpert hands.

Look who has come to pay me a visit!

The Other’s voice sounded like a clogged kitchen sink trying to approximate human speech. Palmer felt ill as her cold, hateful venom leaked into his consciousness.

Give me a kiss, lover boy!

He smashed his fist into The Other’s face as hard as he could. Blood the color and consistency of burnt engine oil flew from her nostrils. The Other laughed, sounding like a cross between a lion roaring and a toilet backing up. He hit The Other harder, but all she did was laugh some more.

Suddenly Palmer was back in his own body. He landed two more blows before he realized he was hitting Sonja. Somehow he was astride her, one hand on her throat as while the other punched her again and again. Her sunglasses had fallen off, revealing eyes the color of a dying sun. In the dark, the ichor that passed for her blood almost looked normal.

Palmer stared at his lover’s bruised and swollen face, the damage already disappearing before his stunned eyes. He then looked at his clenched fist. He opened it as if expecting a stinging insect to fly out.

“I’m sorry, Sonja. I don’t know what happened. I was ... I thought I was fighting ...I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

She smiled, then—a slow, lazy smile of satiation— and placed a finger on his trembling lips, halting his babbled apology. She pulled him down to her, pressing his face between her breasts. He could not have escaped her embrace, even if he tried.

They lay together for a long time until Palmer finally fell asleep. In his dreams, he heard the groaning of approaching glaciers and the echo of inhuman laughter.

Chapter Nine

They had sex every night following Sonja’s return, often more than once. But the telepathic communion they had once shared was now strained, bordering on the nonexistent. Sonja was always guarded during their trysts, her defenses at the ready. She seemed unwilling to relax, even in the heat of the most intimate of moments. Palmer was uncertain whether it was because she was afraid of the Other getting out, or of him getting in. She had become a blank wall, shrugging off every attempt at psychic rapport. Whatever secrets Sonja kept locked inside herself were hers and hers alone. While this bothered him, Palmer knew better than to press the issue.

But as the telepathic side of their relationship dwindled, the darker side grew. The first time she came to him with the whip, he threw it down. He did not want to play that game. He refused to hurt her. Then she took off her sunglasses and looked at him with those terrible eyes, mutated beyond tears, and something within him broke.

He beat her until the blood flew, stippling the walls and spotting the bare light-bulb hanging over the bed. He beat her until his arms ached and the whip fell from his numbed fingers—all to meet her need. Because she needed his blows—needed them more than his caresses. Palmer did not know what sins Sonja hoped to expiate with these stinging leather kisses, nor did he need to. Some things are sacred, even to monsters.

A week after Sonja came home, Palmer awoke in the middle of the night to find the bed empty. His first thought was of Lethe, and he hurried to the child’s bedroom, but she was sound asleep. Palmer felt a surge of shame. Sonja would no more harm Lethe than he would. He looked out the window at the nearby forest. No doubt she was out hunting. After all, she was nocturnal. As he returned to their room, he saw her crawl in through the window. She was completely nude, her mouth and belly smeared with fresh blood.

“Sonja?”

She hissed at him like a startled cat. Every hair on his body stood on end as he realized what he was looking at wasn’t Sonja, but the demon inside her.

The Other spoke to him then, in a gravelly, slurred baritone, sounding like a remixed, slowed-down version of Sonja’s usual voice. “Why does she keep you around, Palmer?” She laughed, licking the blood off the back of her hand like a cat cleaning itself. She enjoyed making him twitch.

Palmer was uncertain whether Sonja’s vampire alter ego was a separate identity or only her id given voice. Whether she was genuinely possessed or simply mad, he had to be careful when dealing with the Other. She lacked Sonja’s patience— marginal as that could be, at times—and had made it clear more than once that she suffered Palmer’s presence only as a ‘favor’ to her host.

“I want to talk to Sonja,” he said firmly, as if demanding to speak to the manager at a fast-food joint.

“Tough titty, asshole,” the Other growled, dropping onto the bed. “She ain’t here.”

“Then I’ll wait until she gets back,’ Palmer replied, folding his arms.

“Back off, Renfield!’ the Other snapped, showing her fangs in ritual display.

Suddenly the Other fell silent, and something resembling fear flickered across its face. Palmer glanced over his shoulder at the bedroom door and saw Fido standing on the threshold, his eyes glowing in the dark. By the time he returned his gaze, Sonja was sitting there, frowning at the blood drying on her belly. She swiped a finger along the smear and tasted it, grimacing slightly. “Don’t worry, it’s not human,” she reassured him. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“You went out hunting, and the Other came back.”

“Did she speak?” Sonja asked cautiously.

“Yeah, but she didn’t say much.”

“About what?”

“It asked me why you keep me around.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t say anything,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “Because I don’t know the answer.”

“That’s not true.”

“Is it?” Palmer knelt beside her on the bed, taking her hands into his. “Sonja, what’s wrong? What happened in New Orleans that you’re not telling me? Whatever it was, you can share it with me.”

She looked into his face, her dark-adapted pupils so dilated they filled her eyes from lid to lid. Suddenly a great sadness pressed against him, wrapping him in stifling grayness. A black depression filled his lungs; crushing the breath from him while his heart first seemed to swell with agony, then wither from misery. Palmer felt himself being sucked into a churning whirlpool of grief that sought to pour itself into him until it ruptured every cell in his body.

Marshaling all his strength, both physical and mental, Palmer punched her as hard as he could. He told himself it wasn’t cruelty: it was self-preservation. The pain retreated from his mind, leaving in its place a red-hot coal of anger, betrayal…and arousal. His orgasm took him by surprise. He hadn’t even touched himself. His fists ached from the pounding they’d administered. His body was still trembling like a plucked guitar string. The walls of the room looked as if someone had tried to clean a dirty paintbrush by flicking it dry. Sonja lay facedown on the bed, her body twisted in sheets smeared with her blood and sweat. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

“Sonja?”

No response.

He rolled her over. Her body was heavy and limp. Her face was a mess of blood, pulped cartilage and shattered bone. She still wasn’t breathing. Her brain sounded like a radio tuned to an empty channel.

Palmer lurched to his feet, bile rising in his throat, and ran to the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and splashed water on his face. When he looked into the mirror, he found his reflection haggard and drawn, with a mad gleam in its eyes. He recognized the gleam. He’d seen it before, in the eyes of the humans who served Morgan and Pangloss—the ones called ‘Renfields’. That’s what the Other had called him: Renfield.

Palmer pressed his bruised and bleeding hands against his face, trying to blot the sight from his eyes. The screech and squall of a thousand minds pushed against him, threatening to breach his barriers and inundate him with the fears, hopes, dreams, secrets, and sins of the entire world, until he, himself, was completely erased.

“Stop it!” he yelled at an old lady in Poughkeepsie, who couldn’t decide whether or not to put her cancer-ridden poodle down. “Get out of my head!” He screeched at an aging businessman in Taipei worried about his waning potency. “Leave me alone!” he bellowed at a member of the Taliban in Kabul, who was fearful he was being followed by a team of Navy Seals.

He jerked open the bathroom door. Sonja was standing on the other side, her cheekbones already restructured back to normal. Her lips had deflated, and the bruises covering her eyes were quickly fading from black to blue to yellow.

He had failed her. He would always fail her. How could he hope to satisfy the death-wish of a woman who healed within minutes?

Later, as he laid there beside her on the bloodstained bed, watching the dawn chase the shadows across the walls of their room, he wondered which was worse: thinking that he’d killed her, or being disappointed to discover she was still alive.

Chapter Ten

Palmer was building yet another shipping crate when Lethe came out onto the patio to watch him. She was carrying the black mask he’d kept from the previous shipment.

“Where’s Auntie Boo?”

“Auntie Boo’s sleeping. You know she sleeps during the day.”

“Not all the time,” Lethe said, with just a touch of petulance.

“You’re right. Sometimes she’s awake during the day. But only under special circumstances.”

Lethe held up the mask so that it covered her face. Her eyes, golden and pupil-less, shone in the empty sockets. It made Palmer’s flesh creep.

“Put that thing away!” he snapped.

Lethe flinched at the unexpected sharpness in his voice, and Palmer inwardly cursed himself. He was about to tell Lethe he was sorry, when she turned and ran back inside the house. It was then that he noticed Fido standing in the doorway, staring at him with the same golden gaze as Lethe’s.

“Well, I screwed the pooch that time, didn’t I?” Palmer grunted as he set aside his tools and massaged the back of his neck. “I’m letting this shit with Sonja get the better of me. I shouldn’t take it out on the kid.” Palmer shook his head and grimaced in disgust. “Jesus! I must be crazier than I thought! I’m telling my woman trouble to one of the seraphim!”

Lethe peered out the window that faced the courtyard. Daddy was talking to Fido and looking sad. Lethe knew Daddy didn’t want to be mean to her. But Lethe’s feelings were still hurt. She looked down at the black mask she held in her hands, the empty eyes and mouth turned towards her as if patiently awaiting an answer.

Sighing to herself, Lethe placed the mask on Daddy’s worktable, where she first found it. She wondered what she would do to pass the day. She was tired of playing by herself, and she’d read all her books so many times she had lost interest in them. Daddy tried hard to keep her library stocked, but she’d long outgrown The Little House On The Prairie, Oz, and Treasure Island. Even David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn were no longer challenging to read.

She wished Daddy would let her go into town with him. She really wanted to see other children, other people, and other places. She watched these things on the video player, but that wasn’t the same thing as experiencing them for her self. All her life—or at least as far back as she could remember— Daddy had kept her away from what he called “normal people”. Daddy and Auntie Blue both agreed that “normal people” would not understand her. They told her that she was different, and that “normal people’ didn’t like things that were “different”. They told her the “normal people” would look at her eyes and get scared. They were also afraid the Bad Man would find her and take her away and put her in some horrible. The Bad Man had done something to hurt Auntie Blue, a long time ago, and killed her real mommy and daddy, back when she was really little.

Lethe couldn’t remember much of what happened back then. What memories she did have were that of hunger or being wet—baby stuff. Sometimes she remembered her mother, Anise, although all she could recall was a warm, dark figure who smelled of milk. Once Lethe had asked Auntie Blue if Anise was her sister and Auntie Blue had replied that they had the same father. Lethe couldn’t remember her biological father at all, but she knew his name was Fell. The first time she’d been told that Daddy wasn’t really her flesh-and-blood father she’d burst into tears and clutched his pant legs, terrified that she was going to be taken away. But that was twenty months ago, back when she was still a little kid and didn’t know any better.

But now she was growing up— faster than Daddy or Auntie Blue even realized. The only one who knew that Lethe’s childhood was nearing its end was Fido. Fido talked to her at night while she was asleep. He didn’t talk with his mouth, but he didn’t talk with his head, either, the way Daddy and Auntie Blue did. It was more like Fido felt things to her.

Fido was as important as Daddy, even though he didn’t fix peanut-butter and banana sandwiches or read Dr Seuss to her, because it was Fido’s job to make sure she was safe. It was his presence that kept the Bad Man from finding her. Fido was there to make sure she grew up, so she could fulfill her destiny. (Fido used the word ‘destiny’ a lot.)

Even now, as she thought of him, Fido lumbered into view. He was big, bulky and shaggy, like a Saint Bernard in human form, wrapped in filthy cast-off sweaters with newspapers stuffed in his boots. Daddy said Fido looked like a homeless person, which confused Lethe because Fido lived in their house. She knew from her contact with Fido that it took a lot of energy to maintain his physical form and that he would be a lot happier if he could go around without his body slowing him down, but it was important for him to stay manifested on the physical plane for as long as she required protection, which wouldn’t be much longer now.

Fido was excited by the prospect of being able to rejoin his brother-sisters, but part of him was sad, too because this meant Lethe was growing up and wouldn’t need him anymore. Lethe tried to cheer him up and told him she’d always need him, but they both knew that wasn’t true.

Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to turn to Daddy for help, or rely on Fido for protection. Her success or failure was totally up to her, and nobody else. A part of her cringed at the thought of dealing with so much responsibility. But, at the same time, it also meant she would finally be free to see the world and everything in it, firsthand. She could go to town if she wanted—or anywhere else. Thinking about it made her scared and excited all at once, mixing her up inside. Growing up was scary, but then everything really important is kind of scary.

Lethe padded down the hall to the bedroom Daddy shared with Auntie Blue. The door was shut but not locked, so Lethe was able to get in. The room was very dark and stiflingly hot. No human could possibly sleep in such a sweatbox, but Auntie Blue lay on the bed, covered by a sheet.

Lethe moved to the bed while Fido hung back. Auntie Blue lay cold, white, and silent on the bed. She wasn’t wearing any clothes under the sheet. She wasn’t breathing, and she wasn’t sweating, although the room’s temperature was over ninety degrees. There was blood smeared on the pillowcases and sheets and the room smelled like stinky socks. Lethe looked back at Fido, who shuffled back and forth at the threshold.

“Its okay, Fido. The Other’s asleep, too.”

Auntie Blue didn’t like Fido. She said he made her nervous, but what she really meant was that he made the Other nervous. Lethe had sent Fido to scare the Other away the night before because she knew it wanted to hurt Daddy. Auntie Blue loved Daddy, but sometimes she had a real hard time controlling the Other. Lethe gently brushed aside a lock of dark hair from her godmother’s forehead and kissed her brow. Sonja’s skin was cool and dry under her lips.

“Bye, Auntie Blue,” she whispered. “Thanks for helping me get born.”

Palmer fixed Lethe’s favorite meal as a peace offering and went to her room to tell her to wash up, assuming she was either playing with her dolls or reading books to Fido.

“Time for dinner! I made pigs-in-a-blanket.”

Fido looked up from his guard post at the foot of Lethe’s bed, his eyes unreadable as ever. Palmer’s eyes went automatically to the jumble of dolls and stuffed animals, but there was no sign of Lethe. In the space where she normally slept was what looked like a sleeping bag made of semi-opaque yellow plastic.

“What the—?” Palmer stepped forward, frowning. Maybe it was something Sonja had brought back for Lethe from New Orleans—? As he got closer, he could tell that whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t a sleeping bag. At five feet long and two feet wide, the thing seemed to pulse like a vein, and he could see the outline of a small, slender body hanging suspended at its amber core.

“Lethe!”

Palmer lunged at the cocoon, determined to tear it open with his bare hands and yank his daughter free. However, the moment his fingers made contact with the outer casing a surge of psychic energy, as painful as it was powerful, shot up his arms and into his brain, hurling him back as if he’d just tried to scale an electric fence.

As Palmer shook his head in an attempt to clear it, Fido moved to stand between him and the bed. The seraph’s arms were outspread, his chin lowered in what Palmer recognized as a protective stance.

“Damn you! Stand aside!” Palmer snapped as he got to his feet.

Fido did not offer to move.

“I’ve got to help her!”

This time Fido wavered for a second, then lowered his arms.

Palmer stepped toward the bed again. This time the blast kicked him out of the bedroom and into the hall. He could feel blood running from his nostrils, and his ears rang as if he was on top of an air-raid siren. As he lay there on the floor, the door to Lethe’s bedroom closed of its own accord.

He staggered down the hall, propping his shoulder against the wall to keep from falling. Upon reaching his room, he found Sonja still asleep. Her skin felt dry and cool under his hands, like that of a reptile.

“Sonja!” he barked.

She moved sluggishly, brushing at him with her left hand as if he was a bothersome insect intruding on her sleep. She mumbled something under her breath, and then rolled over, pulling the sheet over her head. Palmer took a deep breath and stepped back from the bed and focused his thoughts.

Sonja!

The telepathic bolt bowed her body as if juiced by a car battery. Sonja’s eyes flew open, and she sat up like a knife blade, the hair on her head erect and crackling like static on a radio. As he reached out to touch her naked shoulder, she drew back and hissed at him.

“Wake up—it’s just me!” he shouted.

She blinked and lifted a hand to her brow. “Something’s happened to Lethe,” Sonja said as she slid out of the bed and began pulling on her clothes.

“How did you know?” Palmer asked.

“I had a dream she told me goodbye,” she replied grimly.

Sonja followed him to Lethe’s room, listening intently as Palmer recounted what had happened earlier.” Fido would never let anything hurt Lethe,” she said. “So whatever you were trying to do was dangerous to her.”

“Dangerous?” Palmer snorted derisively. “I was trying to get her out of that—that thing!”

Sonja gave Palmer a hard look. “Just shut up and let me handle this, okay?”

The door to Lethe’s room opened effortlessly when Sonja tried the handle. She stepped inside, Palmer following close behind her. Fido was still standing guard, shuffling from one foot to the other, watching them intently with his golden eyes. Sonja held up her hands, palms outward. Being in such close proximity to the seraph was actively unpleasant for her—like being dipped in honey and placed on top of an anthill.

“We don’t want to hurt Lethe, Fido. We know you won’t allow that. We’re not going to do anything, Fido.”

“Like hell we aren’t!” Palmer snapped.

“Don’t mind him, Fido,” Sonja said quickly. “Palmer’s just scared. He thinks something bad has happened, and he just wants to help Lethe.”

The seraph continued rocking back and forth, its head wavering like that of a Parkinson’s patient. Sonja turned back to Palmer and grabbed him by the elbow, squeezing it until he grimaced.

“Bill, I want you to promise me that you won’t try and touch Lethe. You got off lucky the first two times, but if you try it again Fido will fry your brain like bacon, do you understand me?”

“Yeah,” he muttered sullenly. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”

Sonja turned back to Fido. “We just want to look at her. That’s all. We’re not going to interfere.”

The seraph slowly moved aside, allowing them an unimpeded view of what lay on Lethe’s bed. The thing was six feet long and three feet wide and seemed to be made from translucent amber. It was filled with a thick fluid-like substance that radiated a diffuse, bio-luminescence, like that of a glowworm. She could glimpse Lethe’s body hanging suspended within.

“It’s getting bigger,” Palmer muttered. “It wasn’t this large when I first found it... Whatever it is.”

“It looks like a cocoon.”

“What the hell is she doing in a fucking cocoon?”

“Undergoing some sort of metamorphosis—that’s what cocoons are for.”

“For the love of God, Sonja, aren’t you going to do something?” Palmer shouted. “That’s our little girl in there!”

As he lunged for the thing on the bed, Fido moved to block his path and the sound of psychic dynamos gearing up filled the room. Swearing under her breath, Sonja grabbed Palmer and tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, slamming the door shut behind her on the way out. She stomped into the kitchen and dropped him into one of the chairs. Palmer was so angry he was choking on his words, but she could hear what he was thinking.

“You can call me a cold-blooded bitch all you want, William Palmer,” she snapped. “But I just saved you from having your brains scrambled! If Fido let you have it, you’d be shitting in diapers and eating through tubes for the rest of your life!”

“I realize that, Sonja,” Palmer said as the rage drained from his face and mind. “I’m sorry I thought those things at you, but you can’t expect me to stand by and do nothing!”

“That’s exactly what I expect you to do,” she replied sternly. “Bill, you’ve known from the start that Lethe isn’t a human child. Hell, you were there when she was born.”

“Don’t remind me,’ he “mumbled, massaging his calf. “I still have scars from where that mutant hell-twin of hers tried to chew off my leg.”

“Lethe was born of two dhampires like me, with the express purpose of breeding a race of living vampires. At first I thought she was a form of seraphim, but now I’m not so sure. Whatever she is, the seraphim consider her important enough to be placed under their protection. And for all we know, this cocoon is perfectly natural. The fact Fido won’t let us touch it suggests this larval stage is necessary.”

Palmer shook his head and got up to retrieve the bottle of tequila from the pantry. Sonja was surprised by how old he looked. The psychokinetic pummeling he’d recently taken didn’t help matters, either. His face was puffy, and bruises were beginning to blossom under his eyes as if he’d been struck by an automobile air-bag. His dark hair and goatee were now liberally shot with gray, and his nose was beginning to dominate his face. He had changed dramatically over the last couple of years, what with his fascination with Mayan body modification, and now he was starting to age. Funny that she hadn’t noticed that before. Was this how it was with vampires and their human lovers? One day they’re handsome, the next they’re old and withered? She had to struggle to remember his age. Forty-three? Forty-four? How old was that in terms of how humans age? And, without realizing it, she began to think of Judd. About his youth, his innocence, and his humanity...

She abruptly reined in her thoughts in, slamming them behind a protective wall. She looked at Palmer, who was sitting there at the kitchen table, the tequila bottle at his elbow, staring at eyes as distant and unreadable as a dead man’s.

Chapter Eleven

Sonja woke up as the sun went down. She showered immediately, making sure to wash away the previous evening’s dried blood, and then wrapped her clean body in a kimono she had picked up in Tokyo. Upon going to check on Lethe’s cocoon she found that it was no longer resting on the child’s bed but was now out on the patio. Fido was still standing guard, regardless of its location.

Palmer was in the kitchen, drinking tequila. In the three days since Lethe retreated into the cocoon, Sonja had yet to see him do anything but drink. It was possible he ate while she was asleep, but she doubted it.

“Who moved that thing onto the patio?”

“I wasn’t me,” Palmer slurred as he tilted back the bottle. He wasn’t even bothering with the rituals of salt and lime anymore. “All I know is that when I woke up today, it was sittin’ out there. Guess Fido moved it while I wasn’t looking.” Palmer set aside the bottle and began pawing through the pile of mail and invoices on the kitchen table. “By the way, you got a letter…”

“A letter? Here?” Sonja stiffened. “Addressed to me?’

“There’s no return address, but it was mailed from the States. It’s got a New York City postmark. Cooper Station, to be exact,” Palmer said as he handed her the envelope addressed to ‘Sonja Blue c/o Indigo Imports’. She smiled despite herself; pickled in tequila or not, he was still a private eye.

The stationery itself was nondescript, the address typed, not printed. That in and of itself, in the age of computer-printed mailing labels was unusual. There was no way to tell who— or what—had tracked her down. Was it a friend or foe? The only way for her to find out was to open it. Inside the envelope was a folded sheet of printer paper. It was a photocopy of an article from the Times. The headline read: ‘Wife of Industrialist Thorne Suffers Stroke.’

“What’s it say?” Palmer asked as he took another slug from the bottle.

“That my mother’s dying,” she replied quietly.

“You’re not really going, are you?” Palmer asked in disbelief as he watched from the door of the bedroom. He was one step from sloppy drunk. His sense of betrayal wrapped itself around Sonja like a mildewed towel.

“Of course I’m going! What the hell does it look like?” she snapped, shoving a pair of leopard-skin bikini briefs, a black lace camisole, and a Revolting Cocks T-shirt into her flight bag. She knew she should feel bad for leaving him alone with Lethe—or rather, Lethe’s cocoon— but was, instead, getting angry at him. Then again, she always got mad when people tried to make her feel guilty. She did enough of that on her own; she didn’t need the extra help.

She went to the wall safe and retrieved the special strongbox where she kept her collection of passports and credit cards. She dumped them onto the bed, rummaging through them for an appropriate alias. She decided to use Sophia Cyan this time out.

“But what about Lethe?” Palmer protested. “You can’t just leave her like this!”

“I can’t do anything for her while she’s in there. What the hell difference does it make if I’m actually here or not?”

“Please. Don’t go. I need you to stay. I’m begging you.”

The pleading in his voice made Sonja turn around. Palmer hadn’t shaved since Lethe became cocooned, nor has he bathed—or even changed his clothes. With his earplugs, tattoos, and nose piercings, he looked like a demented Humphrey Bogart from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and weakness radiated from him like carbon monoxide fumes from a busted muffler.

She quickly turned away for fear of him sensing the disgust welling up inside her. She knew, then, that she could not stay there any longer: for it is in the vampire’s nature to exploit—and eventually destroy—those weaker than themselves.

“Jesus, Sonja,” he whispered, brushing drunkenly at the tears in his eyes. “What’s happening to us?”

She paused for a moment, searching for something to say. Part of her wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him, but another, darker part wanted to tear his throat out. So, instead of answering him she simply stuffed the last of her gear into her carry-on and zipped it shut.

And she left them both behind, just like that.

She wasn’t proud of using Shirley Thorne’s illness to escape an uncomfortable situation at home. Things weren’t merely broken between her and Palmer, they were smashed beyond repair. She had been trying to figure a way out of the situation since returning from New Orleans. Lethe’s metamorphosis had merely accelerated the process—or, so she told herself.

She had developed the ability, over the years, to emotionally cut herself off from people she cared about—or thought she had cared about. She could dismiss it as a side-effect of her being a vampire, but she knew better.

Monsters don’t have a lock on cruelty.

She always flew first class when she had to travel by air. It guaranteed a certain amount of privacy, and if the flight attendants noticed that she never ate while on board, they kept it to themselves. As she settled in for the flight, she ordered a glass of red wine, as camouflage, in order to fit in with the rest of the travelers in the cabin. When her drink arrived, it was served in actual stemware instead of the crappy plastic cups doled out in economy class.

As she watched the clouds slide by her window, she tried to find a memory of her mother. She cast her mind back, to the life before her own…back before Palmer…before Chaz…before Ghilardi and Pangloss...before Morgan and his terrifying, blood-red kisses…

Suddenly she is standing in a backyard. The sun is out, and it is a beautiful afternoon. There are balloons and brightly colored crepe-paper streamers and other children running around, dressed in party clothes. She’s wearing a pink dress with lots of ruffles and petticoats. There’s a man dressed like a clown walking around making Wiener dogs and bunnies out of balloons. Another man dressed in overalls and a cowboy hat leads a pony around in a circle for the older kids to ride. Everyone’s wearing silly cardboard hats and carrying party-favor noisemakers. Everyone’s smiling and pointing behind her. So she turns around and sees her mother standing on the back porch holding a big cake covered in pink icing with big marzipan roses. Her mother is smiling and looks so happy and beautiful. Everyone starts singing “Happy Birthday” as she carries the cake to the picnic table. Her mother says ‘Make a wish, Denise’ and she has to stand up on the picnic bench to blow out the candles…

“Ma’am, are you all right?”

Sonja looked up at the flight attendant, too stunned by the weight of the memory she had unearthed to do more than grunt.

“Are you hurt?” the stewardess asked again in the tone of voice reserved for those drunk, stoned, or stupid.

Sonja glanced down at her hand, which was now a fist full of shattered glass and cabernet. She can tell that the flight attendant is becoming uneasy. The last thing she needs is to be watched like a hawk the rest of the trip.

“There must have been a flaw in the glass,” Sonja suggested while at the same time giving the flight attendant’s mind a small but firm push. “The change in cabin pressure must have caused it to shatter. I’m lucky I didn’t get cut.”

“You’re really lucky, Ms. Cyan,” the flight attendant clucked as she took away the remains of Sonja glass. “The change in cabin pressure must have caused it to break. You could have cut yourself.”

“Yeah,” Sonja muttered, moving her hand in order to hide the gaping, bloodless slice across her palm. “Lucky me.”

Chapter Twelve

It was daylight by the time her flight arrived. The flight from Merida had taken fifteen hours, with a two hour layover in Mexico City, and a five hour in Chicago. She could stay active during the day, but it made her slower and more vulnerable to attack. Although her body craved the regenerative coma that passed for sleep among her kind, which was necessary to repair physical damage, at least she didn’t have to worry about contracting immediate and lethal skin cancer from being exposed to the sun’s rays and bursting into flame. At least, not yet.

As she picked up her rental car at the desk in the terminal she had to fight the instinct to unlock its trunk and crawl inside. Instead, she climbed behind the wheel and drove into the city Denise Thorne had once called home…four decades ago. As she passed through the industrial sector that separated the suburbs from the urban center, she passed the Thorne Complex, which was even bigger than before. She had to hand it to the old man: he always knew how to make a buck and a half.

The daylight poured into the car, making her skin prickle. She kept eyeing the backs of her hands as they clutched the steering wheel, looking for quick-blooming melanomas. She’d seen more than a few vampires die of sunlight poisoning— not a pretty sight. Their skin would quickly become covered in blisters that swelled and swelled until they finally ruptured, and then they simply withered away, like earthworms on a hot sidewalk. It only took a couple of minutes—three, tops—for a dead boy to bust n’ bake. And if they were particularly old—say, over a hundred or so—they’d spontaneously combust.

The clipping she’d received had identified Shirley Thorne as being admitted to St. Mary’s Hospital, the same hospital where Denise had been born. Sonja parked in the deck attached to the hospital and then made her way to the information desk. An older nun wearing bifocals looked up from a computer monitor as she approached.

“Can I be of some assistance, young lady?” she asked politely, yet firmly, eyeing Sonja’s leather jacket.

“I’m looking for a relative who was admitted here. Her name’s Shirley Thorne?”

The nun turned to consult her computer terminal. She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid Mrs. Thorne is no longer with us.”

“You mean she’s been released?”

“No, I’m afraid she passed away yesterday afternoon,” the receptionist replied. “There’s a notation that she was claimed by the Bester-Williamson Funeral Home.” She pursed her lips and offered Sonja a sympathetic smile. “I’m dreadfully sorry. Was she someone close to you?”

Sonja shook her head. “No,” she muttered. “I barely knew her.”

Back in the car, Sonja called the funeral home on her cell phone and was told that the late Mrs. Thorne’s memorial was scheduled for the very next day and that the graveside service was to be held at Rolling Lawn Cemetery. Sonja didn’t have to ask its location as it was the same graveyard that housed Claude Hagerty, as well as Chaz.

Once she got off the phone with the funeral home, she drove the rental car out to a crowded suburban shopping mall and crawled inside the trunk via the rear seat access. It was dark and stiflingly warm, and smelled of gasoline from the fuel tank, but she didn’t care. She curled up in the fetal position surrendered herself to what passed for sleep.

She was fairly sure whatever went on inside her head when she was unconscious did not qualify as dreaming. Often she found herself travelling haphazardly through the dreams and nightmares of strangers, like an insomniac flipping through TV channels. She was uncertain whether she sought out the dreamers, or if they were attracted to her, but in any case she had yet to walk into a pleasant one.

This time she found herself in a dreamscape made of dripping moss and rotten lace. A woman dressed in a white bridal gown sat on a canopy bed with satin draperies coated with mildew, nervously adjusting her dress. As Sonja drew closer, the bride looked up, like a startled fawn, her face obscured by the heavy veil. When she spoke, her voice was that of a five-year-old girl.

He made me dirty.

Sonja looked down at the woman’s lap, expecting to see a bouquet of flowers. Instead, she saw the woman’s hands clawing at her crotch with hideous witch’s fingers. The material of the gown was torn away, exposing withered thighs and her bloodied, wrinkled sex.

He made me dirty.

When she awoke, the car was in motion. She pressed her ear to the dividing wall that separated the back seat from the trunk and heard the rhythmic thump of hip-hop, mixed with male laughter. She concentrated harder, tuning out the intrusive music and background noise, focusing on their conversation.

“The Chopper will pay five, six bills for this bitch.”

“What about the Red? He ships cars over to the Russian black market.”

“He only takes Japanese and Euro shit. This thing’s American.”

“Fuck! There’s no point in lettin’ the Chopper get everything. Maybe there’s something in the trunk we can fence, huh?”

The car slid off the road onto gravel, causing Sonja to bounce around for a few more minutes more until everything came to a stop. The car doors slammed , and she heard two pairs of shoes crunch on the gravel.

“Think there’s anything back there?”

“Who knows? Could be just a spare tire and some jumper cables, or maybe some bitch left her shopping bags from Nordstrom’s in there?”

There was a scraping sound as one of the car thieves worked at the lock with a screwdriver. Probably the same one he’d used to force the door, open the ignition cowl, and start the car. Now that she thought about it, she was pretty damn hungry. She hadn’t eaten in over forty-eight hours, and it was making her irritable. The lock gave way with a loud pop, and the trunk swung open.

They were young, and their surprise and fear made them seem even younger. They were suburban white boys with bad haircuts, dressed in clothes four sizes too big for them, wearing their hats sideways. One of them had a gun stuck in the waistband of his pants.

She grabbed the one with the weapon first, taking him to the ground hard enough to break his back. His scream was high and pure as she tore into his throat. The other one companion shouted and drove a six-inch screwdriver into her back, sliding between her ribs and puncturing a lung, forcing her to look up from her feeding. She hissed at him like an angry cat, displaying her fangs. The kid let go of the handle of the screwdriver, which was still stuck in her back, and turned to flee, but she pouched on him like a panther taking down a deer, snapping his neck in less than a second.

She stood up and groped for the handle of the screwdriver jutting from her back, yanking it free with a grimace. She could feel her left lung deflating like a punctured party balloon, but it was nothing that a little blood wouldn’t fix. She returned to the first youth, draining him completely dry, then took as much as she could stomach from the second. She then dragged their emptied bodies into a nearby ditch. How thoughtful of them to pick a nice, secluded spot, in the middle of an abandoned construction site, for their own disposal.

The ignition completely jacked, so she had to hot-wire the car to get to start. The rental company would not be pleased when ‘Sophia Cyan’ turned it back in. Now that the sun was down , and she was up, she decided to cruise the old hometown, to see if anything else might kick a memory out of what was left of Denise Thorne. It worried Sonja, at times that she no longer felt her previous self’s pain like she used to.

Denise had once been a larger part of her personality, but over the last decade or so her voice had grown gradually weaker, drowned out by the increasingly strident Other. Maybe a visual cue would spark an emotion that went with the dry and flavorless memories in her head. Because without those flashes of sentiment, it was as meaningful as watching someone else’s old home movies.

Suddenly, before she knew it, the gates were in the headlights of the car, throwing up striated shadows. The twelve-foot brick walls that screened the estate from the road were overgrown with creeping ivy and covered with graffiti, and there was a heavy chain coiled around the gate like a chrome python, secured by a padlock the size of a baby’s head. A metal sign read: “No Trespassing. Violators Will Be Prosecuted to the Full Extent of the Law.’

She blinked and looked around, uncertain how she’d gotten there. Had she deliberately driven in this direction, or was something else besides her subconscious involved? She killed the engine and slid out from behind the wheel of the car.

She hefted the lock, judging its weight, and then yanked it open as it was made of tin foil, the chain unspooling at her feet. With a single push of her hand, the gates of the Wheele Estate swung inward with a rusty squeal.

She walked up the overgrown driveway in the direction of where the mansion once stood. Outside of the graffiti on the walls, she was surprised that there were no other signs of vandalism or squatters. Although the abandoned five-acre estate was perfect for suburban youth to practice drinking, drugs and sex, it was completely deserted. As she neared the charred remains of the Wheele mansion, she soon realized why no one was using it as a clandestine party central.

The place was haunted Big time.

Even though the place had burned to the ground years ago, she could still smell the stink of smoke. There wasn’t a lot left of the house— she’d made sure of that when she set it on fire after killing everyone inside it. She also unintentionally killed a lot of people in the surrounding area. It wasn’t her fault—it was the Wheele bitch who’d set the ball rolling by kidnapping her and keeping her locked up in that insane asylum. Yes, Wheele was the one who started it, but she had been the one to finish it, by damn. She told herself that the psychic shock wave she’d released that night only affected those with true darkness in their souls, ones already on their way to madness and murder. At least, that’s what she desperately needed to believe.

There was a light moving amongst the ruins. It was a cold, unnatural luminescence, glowing greenish-white against the darkness. At first it was formless glob of pulsating light hovering amidst the collapsed timbers and fallen masonry of the destroyed house like a will-o’-the-wisp. Then it began to change, taking on the shape and substance of something that had once been a woman.

The apparition had no eyes, no ears, and no tongue, its skin hanging from phantom bones like an empty sack. Although it possessed arms and an upper torso, its legs ended in glowing tatters at the knees. Even though the ghost had no eyes in its sockets, Sonja knew it could see her—and recognized her.

“Hello, Catherine. It’s been a long time, girlfriend.”

The specter of Catherine Wheele, televangelist and faith healer, raised its glowing arms and howled like a damned soul. Which was exactly what she was.

“Can the spook routine, sister. It might work on teenagers looking for a place to screw and bums trying to find a place to take a dump, but it doesn’t scare me.”

The ghost shrieked like an owl with its tail caught in a blender and swooped towards her, fingers crooked into claws.

Sonja held up her right hand and a burst of electric-blue light flew from her palm, catching the ghost in the midsection. What had once been Catherine Wheele rolled up like a window shade, reverting to a pulsating ball of light.

“You’re as stupid dead as you were when you were alive,” Sonja sighed. “And just because you’re dead doesn’t mean I can’t still kick your butt, lady.”

Catherine Wheele grudgingly reassembled herself from the ball of ectoplasm, scowling at Sonja from across the Divide. Smaller, feebler lights began to appear as well, floating through the night air like fireflies. One of the ghostly balls unraveled itself, revealing itself to be what was left of Dr. Wexler, the corrupt psychiatrist who first steered Shirley Thorne into Catherine Wheele’s clutches, then agreed to keep Sonja locked up in his sanitarium. Sonja was glad to see he was being forced to spend his afterlife in the company of his former lover and blackmailer. The other, lesser lights took were no doubt the Wheelers, Catherine’s private cadre of religious fanatics, hired muscle, and sex-slaves.

“It’s nice to see you’re not lonely,” she smirked, all the while carefully searching the wanly glowing collection of ghosts for one face in particular. She heaved a small sigh of relief when she did not see whom she was looking for and turned to go.

As Sonja sauntered back to the car, the ghost of Catherine Wheele threw her mouth open so wide it struck her phantom breastbone, and issued an agonized shriek that suggested she better watch her ass come Halloween.

Rolling Lawn Cemetery unlocked its gates at seven in the morning, by which time Sonja had been inside the grounds for a couple of hours, scouting out a suitable tomb to use as a crash pad. But before she turned in for the day, she had a couple of visits to make.

She went to Chaz’s grave first.

She wasn’t sorry she killed him. She might have felt a touch melancholy, but she never regretted it. Chaz was a dyed-in-the-wool bastard who had betrayed her for a suitcase full of money. Not that it did him any good in the end. Instead of running off to South America, like he’d always dreamed of, the idiot instead hung around town, frittering his fortune away on hard drugs and rough boys. It was like he was just killing time, waiting for her to escape and hunt him down.

Much like how he was waiting for her perched atop his gravestone. The ghost was composed of a grayish purple fog, his eyes empty smudges and his nose no more than the hint of shadow. If she hadn’t known him so well in life, she would not have been able to identify him at all. He was still smoking, though. He remembered enough about his former life to cling to its habits, at least.

“Hello, Chaz. You’re looking well,” she said with a humorless laugh. “Judd’s dead. But I guess you already know that, though.’

She expected some sign of malevolent glee on the specter’s part, but instead he gestured dismissively with one hand, leaving trails of ectoplasm in its wake. He proved as ambivalent in death as he had in life.

“Why haven’t you moved on?” She asked. “What holds you to this plane? Is it me?”

Something flickered in the smudges that were once Chaz’s eyes. As Sonja looked at the tattered shadow, memories rose inside her. Memories of when they had been friends, of times when they had been lovers. She closed her eyes to ease their stinging, but she still couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry for killing him.

When she opened her eyes again, Chaz was gone.

Her second stop was the grave of Claude Hagerty. The ghost of the orderly was nowhere to be found. For that, she was thankful. His death had been an unpleasant one, and often such traumas keep the dead tethered to the mortal plane for decades after their deaths. But it seemed Claude Hagerty had managed to slip his mortal bonds and move on to whatever it is that awaits humans when they die.

The same could not be said for all of Rolling Lawn’s internees, whose after-selves flickered amidst the tombstones and vaults like fireflies, for those able to see such things.

The sun would be rising soon. She went to the tomb she’d chosen as her crash space. The memorial sconces were empty , and cobwebs hung from the ceiling in delicate tatters, assuring her that she would not be stumbled upon by a grieving family member come to pay their respects. She curled up in the darkest corner, setting her cell phone alarm for four o’clock in the afternoon.

As she drifted off into what passed for sleep amongst her kind, she realized for the first time that she had not thought about either Palmer or Lethe all night. She told herself that meant that they were okay.

Chapter Thirteen

Palmer couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a sober breath, shaved, or changed his clothes. He had been sitting at the kitchen table in nothing but a pair of khaki shorts for several days, but he wasn’t sure exactly how many.

He staggered over to the calendar hanging next to the stove and squinted at it. He’d gotten it from a Pharmacia in Medina. The calendar showed a handsomely muscled Aztec warrior, garbed in brilliantly colored feathers and a skimpy loincloth, shooting a bow at the coming twilight while at his sandaled feet lay sprawled a voluptuous maiden, wrapped in a diaphanous robe. Palmer was unfamiliar with the myth the picture was supposed to represent. Was the warrior defending the fallen priestess, or was he the one responsible for her death? And what the hell was he shooting at, anyway? Thinking about the picture on the calendar made his head hurt, so he wobbled back to the kitchen table and sat down again with an explosive sigh. It took him a moment before he realized he’d forgotten to count how many days it’d been since Lethe disappeared into the cocoon and his life went into the crapper.

He also wasn’t sure how long it had been since Sonja had left. He was far too drunk to cast his mind for her, but he doubted he would be able to reach her, even if he was sober. Besides, the possibility of accidentally locking horns with the Other again, no matter how distant, was enough to keep him from attempting such a connection. Palmer’s gaze dropped onto the black mask, still sitting atop a pile of unpaid bills and unfiled invoices. The empty eyes stared up at him, the lips parted as if in anticipation of a kiss—or a bite. His head continued to throb, so he rested it on the table.

When he opened his eyes again, it was dark.

He grunted and jerked upright in his chair, knocking the tequila bottle onto the floor. It shattered, spraying his bare feet and legs with what little liquor remained inside it. The color of the tequila made him think of Lethe’s eyes—and the cocoon.

He lurched to his feet and turned toward the doors that lead out onto the patio. He always checked the cocoon at night. Once the sun went down the weird glow that suffused the cocoon grew more intense, like a piece of amber held in front of a flashlight beam. Lethe—or whatever Lethe was becoming—seemed to be far more active at night, and sometimes he could see movement inside the chrysalis. It soothed him, somewhat, to know that Lethe was still alive somewhere inside that thing, even though he could no longer read her mind.

Palmer opened the door and stepped out onto the patio, expecting to be greeted by the mellow glow from the cocoon. But instead, all he found was darkness. He stepped forward hesitantly, searching for Fido’s bulky figure in the shadows, but there was no sign of the seraph. Then, as his eyes became accustomed to the night, he glimpsed something lying on the bricks of the patio. At first it looked like a large, deflated balloon, like the kind used by the weather service. It lay there, limp and forlorn, like an octopus cast up after a storm. As he moved closer, he could make out a faint, yellowish fluorescence radiating from it. He knelt and poked at the remains of the cocoon, which felt like a cross between a freshly shed snakeskin and a wet blanket.

“Lethe?” he called out drunkenly, his head swiveling about. “Where are you?” He struggled to get to his feet, trying not to black out as he did so. The adrenaline in his system was now battling the tequila for mastery, but he was too wasted to sober up quickly.

Suddenly a light came on just above his head as if a tiny sun had abruptly come into existence. He cringed and lifted a hand to shield his eyes, convinced that the military was hovering over the house in a helicopter, pointing surveillance lights down at him. Then he realized that the sound of rotors chopping the air was actually his own pulse hammering away inside his ears. It was then that the light spoke to him.

Daddy.

The light lowered its wattage, revealing what dwelt at its heart. The form hovering above him was that of a naked young woman with dusky skin and shining golden eyes without pupil or iris, her breasts full and hips wide, with long hair floating free like a mantle buffeted by gentle winds. She was as beautiful and unearthly as a vision of Venus.

“Lethe?” Palmer gasped. “Is that you?”

The glowing woman smiled and when she spoke her lips did not move. Her voice was smooth as velvet, as comforting as a cool hand on a fevered brow. Yes, I was Lethe. But my childhood is over. It is time for me to begin my work. I owe you much for keeping me safe and showing me what it is like to be human. That is why I shall make you the First.

“First what?” he frowned.

Father of the coming race.

Before he could ask her what she meant, the glowing woman swooped down and caught him up in her arms. Within seconds they were streaking through the night sky, the tree-tops inches below his wildly kicking feet.

“Lethe! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Suddenly her mouth was on his, her tongue darting between his lips. For a moment Palmer felt himself begin to respond, and then he retched and pushed himself away.

“Stop that!” he shouted. “I’m your father, Lethe! Put me down on solid ground right this minute!”

A look of confusion crossed the glowing woman’s face as her eyes shone forth like twin harvest moons. Palmer looked for some sign of the child he nurtured and raised for the better part of three years, but she was nowhere to be found in the goddess before him.

“I merely wish to honor you by making you the First of my Bridegrooms. There is nothing to fear from me, William Palmer.”

“I said no, young lady,” he repeated, in his sternest voice, and for the briefest moment the Lethe he once knew was looking back at him.

As you wish.

She left him in the middle of an orchard, ten miles due east of the house. He stood there, trembling, still dressed in nothing but his shorts as he watched the glowing goddess he had once called daughter soar into the night, streaking across the night sky like a meteorite returning to the heavens. It was only then that he realized that he would never see Lethe again. The sob that escaped him was so powerful it brought him to his knees as surely as a blow. As the tears rolled down his face, he began tearing at the grass as if digging a grave with his bare hands before finally throwing up.

He froze upon hearing the sound of a twig snapping and looked up to find a native woman staring at him from the edge of the clearing. He could tell by her diminutive stature and the shape of her eyes and cheekbones that she was one of the Lacandon, the descendants of the ancient Mayan kings who once ruled the land before the arrival of the conquistadores. The young woman regarded him curiously, but did not seem to be alarmed by his strange behavior.

“Are you well, señor?” She asked.

Palmer began to laugh hysterically. “No. I am not well at all,” he was finally able to reply, before collapsing into even more laughter, followed by unconsciousness.

Chapter Fourteen

She arrived at the graveside just as Shirley Thorne’s casket was lowered to its final rest. It was made of mahogany and shone like a burnished shield in the late afternoon sun. A large floral spray rested atop it, clutching the casket like a spider. After each of the mourners tossed a handful of sod into the yawning grave, they shook the hand of the bereaved husband, now a widower and muttered their sympathies, then quickly returned to their waiting limos.

Sonja stood at a distance, screened from view by a weeping angel headstone. She scanned the milling crowd, trying to spot familiar faces from Denise’s past, but the only one she recognized belonged to Jacob Thorne, who looked considerably older than the last time she’d seen him. The iron will and steely resolve that had made him a titan of industry was succumbing to rust.

Thorne did not move to join the mourners in their exodus from the cemetery, but, instead, stood by his wife’s grave, hands clasped before him, peering down into the hole as if he could see the future in its depths.

Sonja moved from her hiding place, gliding between the gravestones as if maneuvering across a dance floor. Jacob Thorne was not her father. She knew this as surely as she knew when the sun rises and sets. And yet, when she called out to him came out of her mouth was: “Daddy?”

Jacob Thorne wearily raised his head and glanced in her direction. He did not seem surprised to see her, but neither was he pleased. “Somehow I knew you’d show up.” “Sir? Is everything okay?” Thorne’s chauffeur asked, moving to place himself between his employer and the young woman dressed in a leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses. He was a big man with an obvious holster bulge inside his jacket.

It's okay, Carl,” Thorne said, dismissing his bodyguard with a wave of his liver-spotted hand. “I know the young lady.”

The chauffeur grunted and stepped aside, but did not take his eyes off Sonja as she joined the old man. She peered down into the dark and lonely grave.

“Did she suffer?”

Thorne shrugged, his once-broad shoulders now thin and narrow in his suit. “That was always Shirley’s prerogative— suffering. Agonizing over Denise was the only thing that kept her going. Whatever you did to her mind that night—the night she finally accepted that Denise was dead— that was the beginning of the end for her. She just gave up after that.”

“I never intended to harm her,” Sonja said earnestly. “I only wanted to deliver her from the torment she was putting herself through. I never meant to hurt her. She was my mother…”

Thorne’s pale features abruptly reddened as he pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket with a trembling hand. “The hell she was! I don’t know who or what you truly are, but you are not Denise!”

“No,” Sonja agreed quietly. “Not anymore. But once, in another lifetime...” She knelt and gathered up a handful of dirt and tossed it onto the lid of Shirley Thorne’s casket. “You have to understand, Mr. Thorne, I did not ask to come into this world, just as Denise did not ask to leave it. I did not choose to be what I am.”

Thorne’s shoulders dropped as he gave her a second, longer look, the hardness fading from his eyes. “No, I suppose you didn’t,” he grunted.

“Sometimes Denise’s memories will resurface,” she said. “Most are somewhat vague, but sometimes they’re quite vivid. Recently I experienced a memory of a birthday party. There were other children there, as well as clown and a man giving pony rides...”

“You couldn’t possibly remember that!” Thorne said with a surprised laugh. “You were only three years old…” He trailed off, fisting the handkerchief into a ball.

“Your wife was wearing a dress with a Peter Pan collar, and she was so pretty and happy. And the birthday cake was vanilla with pink icing.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Thorne demanded, his voice wavering on the verge of breaking down. “Isn’t it enough I’ve lost my wife? Do you have to make me relive the loss of my daughter as well?”

“Mr. Thorne,” Sonja replied gently, “there is another place beyond this world. Several, in fact. There are as many different paradises as there are living things, as well as innumerable varieties of damnation. And the truth is that everyone holds the keys to heaven and hell within them. I just wanted to let you know your wife is finally happy now.”

“That’s what the minister said,” Thorne growled. “‘She’s in a better place, Jacob. She’s beyond the pain of this world.’ Bullshit.”

“I understand your skepticism,” she replied. “But wouldn’t you agree that I might be something of an authority on the supernatural?”

Thorne frowned as if it had never occurred to him before that her existence was evidence of something beyond the worm and the tomb and the winding sheet.

“As I said, heaven is different for everyone. And, for your wife, it is a sunny afternoon in 1956, celebrating her daughter’s third birthday. I know this because I glimpsed it the moment she died. Mr. Thorne, your wife is at peace now.”

Tears began to run down Jacob Thorne’s cheeks. His sobs were so loud powerful they threatened to topple him headlong into the open grave. “Oh, God…Denise,” he moaned, reaching for her with a trembling, old man’s hand.

But she was already gone.

By the time she got back to Merida, everything had turned to shit. She could smell it the moment she got off the plane. The psychic stench a dead relationship gives off is a lot like that of rotten fish, liberally mixed with vomit, with a dollop of dirty diapers on the side. The closer she got to the hacienda, the more powerful the reek became. She had no idea what had happened during her absence, but whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

When she arrived, she found the front door of the ranch-house unlocked. The kitchen table was covered with unpaid bills, unopened mail, and empty tequila bottles. She went out onto the patio, searching for signs of Lethe’s cocoon, but all she found was something that looked like a snake molt, made brittle and black from exposure to the sun.

She called out Lethe’s name, hoping against hope that her god-daughter would come rushing out from some hiding place, giggling in delight at having tricked Auntie Blue. But there was no answer.

She went back into the house and headed for the nursery. She stared at the plush stuffed animals and coyly smiling dolls that filled every corner of the room. Something behind her eyes began to pulse and ache , and she thought she heard Shirley Thorne’s voice singing “Happy Birthday to You”.

Sonja waded into the sea of stuffed toys, tossing them aside as she continued her search for Lethe. Panic and confusion and self-loathing rose in her gut. How could she have been so stupid? Why did she have walk off and leave her? Was this how Shirley Thorne felt when she got the news her only child had disappeared without a trace from the streets of London? If so, no wonder the poor woman retreated into madness.

“Lethe, this isn’t funny anymore!” Sonja shouted at the empty house. “Come out where I can see you!”

“Lethe doesn’t live here anymore.”

She spun around to see Palmer standing slumped in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. He’d come up from behind without her picking him up on radar. Which meant either he was screening him self from her. Although he looked pretty rough, he was at least wearing clean clothes and freshly shaven. Nor did he appear to be drunk.

Bill?

As she stepped towards him he drew back, hugging his elbows as if he was afraid she might touch him. “Talk with your mouth,” he rasped, the odor of dead love coming off him in waves. “I don’t want you in my head.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t live here anymore?” Sonja asked. “She’s not even three years old! Where the hell else could she be?”

Palmer gave a humorless laugh that sounded more like a hiccup. “I don’t know where she is. And I don’t want to know.”

“What the hell—?” Sonja scowled. “This is Lethe we’re talking about! Palmer, damn it, what’s wrong with you? Where is she? Don’t tell me she just up and flew away!”

Palmer began to laugh so hard he couldn’t catch his breath. Sonja moved to grab him, to try and shake a proper answer out of him, only to have him snarl and lash out at her with his mind. Had she been human, he might have very well killed her or, at the very least, given her a stroke.

Before she realized it, she had him pinned him to the floor with her own mind, his muscles twitching and jerking as he tried, in vain, to regain control of his body.

“I don’t want to play rough, Palmer, but you’re leaving me no choice,” she warned him. The look in his eyes as he stared up at her was black and ugly. She dropped her gaze, but could not shield herself from his hate, which bubbled forth like boiling tar.

“Tell me what happened to Lethe.”

“She came out of the cocoon a couple of days after you left,” he said grudgingly. “I was too drunk to know exactly when.”

“What did she look like?”

Palmer’s gaze became distant. “She was beautiful. She was no longer a child, but a woman…and she was glowing.”

Sonja frowned. “You mean like a pyrotic?”

Palmer shook his head. “No, she wasn’t burning. She was more like a firefly…or a goddess.”

“What did she do?”

“She... she thanked me for taking care of her, for protecting her, and then she said would honor me by making me her first bridegroom.” Palmer’s lower lip began to tremble, and as he looked up at her, Sonja saw the same anger, confusion and hurt in his eyes that she’d seen in Jacob Thorne’s.

“What did she mean by that, Palmer?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that she tried to kiss me, but I made her stop. You know I would never have done something like that, don’t you?”

Sonja scowled as she tried to make sense of what she had been told. No wonder Palmer was in such a state. The human animal comes with a lot of behavioral hard-wiring—some of it biological, some of it societal. But the incest taboo was one of the few that might be both. He might not have sired Lethe, but he had been a father to her in every other way. She withdrew her psychic control over Palmer’s body and walked to the window and stared out at the jungle-covered hills, uncertain as to what to do next.

Palmer’s useless to you now, the Other whispered, its inner-voice as sibilant as a snake's hiss. Just look at him, if you don’t believe me. His circuits are blown. You knew it would come to this, sooner or later. All Renfields eventually lose their minds at some point. Better you put him out of his misery, like you did Judd.

Sonja closed her eyes and dug her fingernails into her palms until the blood came, driving the Other back into whatever hole it lived in within the mind they shared. She sighed and turned back to face Palmer. He had regained control of his body and was sitting on the floor, staring forlornly at one of Lethe’s old dolls as he held it in his hands.

“You’re going to go to sleep for a little while, Bill,” she said gently. “And when you wake up, you’re not going to remember Lethe. It will be as if she never existed.”

“But I don’t want to forget her,” Palmer frowned. “I just want her back the way she was.” “Go to sleep, Bill,” she said firmly.

Chapter Fifteen

Later that night she went out hunting, tracking a wild pig through the dense jungle undergrowth. When she brought it down it squealed angrily and tried to slash her with its tusks. It struggled hard, like all things do when they know their lives are at stake. Just before she sank her fangs into its jugular, the pig released twin streams of shit and piss in a last-ditch bid for freedom. It didn’t work.

It was well past midnight by the time she returned to the ranch-house. She climbed in through the bedroom window, expecting to find Palmer sprawled across the bed. But the bed was empty, and so was the rest of the house. She stepped outside and cast her mind into the darkness, searching for the familiar hum and buzz of his thoughts, but she picked up nothing. Frowning, she intensified her scan until she was able to pick up a tracery of internal monologue she recognized as his, but even that was incredibly vague. Palmer was once more using his telepathic ability to stay off her ‘radar’. But why?

She followed the faint psychic echo to a path at the bottom of the hacienda’s property, leading into the jungle. She recognized it as the one that led to a nearby Mayan ruin. She’d only been there once or twice, but she knew Palmer visited it quite often. She followed the trail to the top of a hill, where a vine-covered jumble of stone that had once been an ancient observatory sat lumped against the night sky. Palmer was seated on a mammoth block of limestone carved to resemble a snarling jaguar. He was not alone.

The woman with him was from one of the native tribes, with long black hair that hung down between her shoulders like a curtain. They sat side by side, turned towards one another. Palmer held her hand in his and they spoke in a language Sonja did not recognize. Not that she needed to understand the words to know they spoke as lovers.

As she watched, Palmer lowered his head as he prepared to kiss the other woman. Sonja could imagine the heat of his breath on her cheek, the smell of him filling her senses, the taste of his lips…

See? The Other’s voice was sharp, sweet, and nasty, like honeyed razor blades jammed in her inner ear. This is what happens when you let your Renfields run free. It happened with Chaz, and now Palmer. In the end, they betray you. They’ll always betray you.

Sonja clenched her fists as the anger inside her bubbled like boiling wax. Her head buzzed as if then was a horde of angry wasps loose within her skull, stinging her brain.

You have to put them on a short leash, the Other continued, its voice suddenly louder and more authoritative than before. That’s how Pangloss, Morgan and all the others keep their Renfields in line. You’ve got to scrape away every vestige of Free Will and hollow them out like jack-o’-lanterns. And not only do they deserve it, they even come to like it. Just ask Judd. Oh. That’s right. You can’t.

“Shut up,” Sonja growled to herself.

She emerged from the darkness like blood from a wound. She paused, leaning against the pockmarked limestone of the ruin like a tough lounging under a street lamp, the jungle moonlight reflecting off her leather jacket.

“How cozy.”

Palmer jumped up, automatically putting himself between Sonja and the woman he was with, who gasped and crossed herself.

“So, this is your back-door woman, huh” She jerked her head at the cowering girl. “Does she know you’re fresh from my bed?” she snarled. “Can she smell me on you, like I can smell her?”

Palmer’s woman cried out at the sight of Sonja’s fangs and grabbed his arm as if to drag him away.

“Leave Concha out of this,” Palmer said sternly. “If you’ve got to take it out on someone, punish me.”

“You love her,” Sonja said flatly. It wasn’t a question.

Palmer glanced down into Concha’s dark brown eyes, now bright with fear and nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“I could kill her, you know,” Sonja said, her voice frighteningly still. “I could murder her and make it so you wouldn’t even know she existed. It would be as simple as wiping a chalkboard clean. Easier, in fact.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he replied stonily.

“Do you, really?”She sneered.

It would be so easy to just reach into his head and flip the switch and return the memories of Lethe she had taken from him. She wanted to see the look on his girlfriend’s face as the past washed over him like a tidal wave, smashing his ego into kindling. Now that would be fun. She could do it over and over again: wiping away his memories of Lethe, only to restore them without warning, so every time he experienced the pain of her loss it would as though it had never happened before. Perhaps she would do that with his girlfriend’s murder, as well. Make him forget Concha, then force him to relive her death over and over again, whenever the mood suited her…

She turned her attention to the woman cowering at his side, who was staring at her like a sparrow entranced by a snake. “Why this one? What’s so special about her?”

“Concha found me wandering in the jungle, miles from here. I don’t know how or why I got there, but she helped me and brought me home. She was there for me.”

“How can you love her?” Sonja said with a dismissive shake of her head. “She’s not like you at all.”

“She’s human. Just like me.”

“But she’s not a sensitive,” she replied tartly. “You can never commune with her on the same plane as you do with me. It might as well be bestiality.”

“But we don’t commune anymore,” Palmer retorted. “You’ve been shut off from me ever since you returned from New Orleans. I tried to understand whatever it was you were going through, but it’s no use. You won’t be satisfied unless I’m as crazy as you are!”

Sonja hissed, swaying like a drunkard brought up short, and moved toward the terrified Concha. Palmer took another stepped forward, lowering his brow in anticipation of psychic battle. “Don’t make me kill you,” he warned.

Her laughter was as hollow as old bone. “You can try. But you’re no match for me, Palmer.” “I know that,” he replied solemnly. “But I’m still not going to let you hurt her.”

“Don’t make me do this to me, Bill,” Sonja whispered. “I need you.”

“Like hell you do,” he replied. “You don’t need anyone. You never have and you never will.”

“That’s not true.”

“Is it?” he asked. “Sonja, if I stay with you, I’m going to end up just another Renfield. Is that what you want?”

The Other spoke again, this time in a cajoling voice. It was the friendliest Sonja had ever heard it. Don’t bother answering the jerk, just go ahead and shut his will off at the faucet. Believe me, he won’t miss it. By the way, I liked the bit about killing his girlfriend and making him forget her, then relive her death whenever you feel like a chuckle. Not bad. You’re getting the hang of it.

Sonja balled her fists and looked down at her boots. “No,” she said grudgingly, causing the Other to spit obscenities no one else could hear.

“Then give me my freedom,” Palmer demanded.

“You’ve always had it!” she retorted, moonlight flaring across the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses.

“Have I?” he challenged.

Sonja did not answer, but, instead, turned her back to him. It felt as if a piano-wire garrote had been slipped around her throat, strangling the words she wanted to say. In the end, all she could say was: “Go.”

Palmer grabbed Concha by the hand and hurried from the ruins into the surrounding jungle. Just before he disappeared into the tangled shadows, he turned and called out to her, mind-to-mind, one last time.

I did love you.

And then he was gone.

Sonja shrieked like a cornered jaguar as she kicked and pummeled the ancient limestone ruins, obliterating friezes carved a thousand years ago. Roaring like a bull ape, she bashed her shoulder against the remaining wall until it collapsed. Once the rage left her, she stood there trembling like a winded stallion, surrounded by her handiwork, her face and clothes limned with the dust of centuries.

I loved you too, she thought in return.

But there was no longer anyone there to hear.

She wandered the halls of the empty ranch-house, too numb to even feel sorry for herself. Within the span of just a few days, the nest she’d built for her ‘family’ had become a tomb. She had already sealed Lethe’s room, to keep Palmer from stumbling across any trace of her existence. Now she did the same to his bedroom, nailing a piece of plywood over the door. Once she was finished, she drifted into the kitchen.

A black papier-mâché mask rested atop a pile of mail heaped on the kitchen table, serving as an ersatz paper weight. As she picked it up, an envelope fell onto the floor. It was addressed to Sonja Blue and bore the same Cooper Union postmark as the previous letter she’d received. Inside the envelope were several clippings from the New York Times, Post, and Daily News, the oldest dated six months back and the most recent from the current month. Most of the articles were brief, taciturn reports of bodies being found in the Triborough area. All of the dead had been women, most of them prostitutes. As she placed the clippings side-by-side on the table, she noticed another thing they all had in common. Each body had been found dressed in a black leather jacket and wearing mirrored sunglasses.

It came to her then, like a dark epiphany: there was no need to despair simply because Palmer and Lethe were no longer around to give her life meaning.

After all, she still had Morgan.

Chapter Sixteen

Heilongjiang Province, the People’s Republic of China:

The madman’s name was Wang Zuocai, and he had spent the last forty years locked away in a sanitarium in Mohe, the northernmost town in China. There were many such sanitariums scattered throughout the People’s Republic, where dissidents who had offended the party leaders had been banished. What made this particular mental hospital different from all the others was that Wang Zuocai was its only inmate. Not one of the six staff members assigned to watch over him knew why the old man had to be kept in isolated confinement and dosed with the most potent psychoactive drugs, but they still did it, without question.

Wang Zuocai was thin to the point of emaciation; his arms and legs withered from decades of either being strapped into a straitjacket or manacled to his bed, and had a long beard and mustache the color of fresh snow. With a piercing gaze that seemed to gaze beyond both time and space, he looked more like a wizard from the Beijing opera than a senile mental patient. This was not far from the truth, for, at one time, Wang Zuocai had served as the mystic adviser to Chairman Mao.

He was born in 1917, back in Zhejiang Province, near the city of Hangzhow. His father had been a wealthy man, owner of a large tea plantation and a factory that produced silk fans and umbrellas, and his mother a descendant of the sorcerers and soothsayers who had advised the emperor since the Ch’in Dynasty.

He could not remember a time in his life when he did not have the ability to see things others were blind to. Sometimes he saw demons hiding behind the smiling faces of his fellow man, and sometimes he saw gods. But mostly what he could see was what other liked to call The Future. His parents hoped that he would become a member of General Chiang Kai-shek’s retinue, but Wang Zuocai’s second sight told him that the future lay with Mao Zedong. So, at the age of sixteen, he joined the Communist Party of China and soon found himself on the Long March.

During those hard, torturous months, on the run from both the Nationalists and the occupying Japanese, Wang Zuocai came to be one of Mao’s most trusted private advisers. The Chairman relied on his talents a great deal, but made sure none, but a handful of his closest confidantes knew the exact nature of his ability. Mao knew that if the Soviets got wind of what Wang Zuocai could do, they would try to steal the soothsayer for themselves. Mao also did not want to have his comrades know he consulted a fortune-teller, a habit largely associated with the decadent, Imperial dynasties. This is how Wang Zuocai became the most influential member of the CPC that no one had ever heard of.

Then, in 1957, the Chairman called his fortune-teller to him and told him of his plans to abolish private farms and create communes to increase China’s agricultural output, as well as establish backyard furnaces in every commune and urban neighborhood in an attempt to turn scrap metal into steel and catapult his country into the Industrial Age. He then asked what great future Wang Zuocai saw for China.

What Wang Zuocai foretold was crop failure and widespread famine, the starvation of tens of millions of his fellow countrymen, wide-spread violence, and even cannibalism. The Chairman, who had grown accustomed to being worshiped as the wisest of men, took exception to such prophecy and denounced him as a reactionary. Wang Zuocai was arrested and taken to a re-education camp in Jiangxi Province.

He spent most of his imprisonment kept in solitary confinement, forced to listen to endless tape loops of Madame Mao quoting the wisdom of the Chairman, day and night. The only time he saw other human beings was when he was dragged out and forced to work the fields, but was forbidden to speak to anyone but his guards.

However, even though he was malnourished and forced to sleep on lice-ridden straw, and denied anything to read except the Little Red Book, Wang Zuocai’s ability to see into the future remained undimmed.

One day, while the guards were delivering one of their regular beatings, he looked into the face of one of the men kicking him and said: “Your wife is being untrue behind your back. She takes the village Party official into her bed the moment you leave the house. He is with her now.”

The guard called him a liar and struck him in the face with his rifle, breaking the oracle’s jaw. Two days later, the guard caught his wife in bed with the village Party official and shot them both, then turned the same rifle he’d used against Wang Zuocai on himself. Of course, Wang Zuocai had seen that as well, which is why he told the guard about his wife’s infidelity in the first place.

Five years passed, during which time thirty million had starved to death throughout the country. Not only that, but the Soviets had withdrawn their technical support, leaving the CPC to clean up its own mess. In 1962, Mao ordered his old adviser’s release and had him brought back to the Forbidden City. But the Chairman soon discovered that the returning Wang Zuocai was far different from the one he had sent away. Although the fortune-teller was still in his mid-forties, his ordeal at the re-education camp had left him old beyond his years, with white hair and toothless gums. But what Mao found most disturbing were Wang Zuocai’s eyes, which now burned with a greater intensity than before, and every so often he grimaced or shook his head as if reacting to only something he could see.

After offering his former confidante some rice wine, Mao asked Wang Zuocai what it was he saw. Wang Zuocai replied that he was watching the assassination of the American president. He then went on to foretell the fall of Saigon, men walking on the moon, and Nixon standing on the Great Wall.

Mao was uncertain whether or not his secret oracle was, indeed, seeing the future or had simply gone mad. However, when Wang Zuocai began to talk about non-human races dwelling unseen amongst humanity, and accusing Mao’s own wife, Jiang Qing, of having the head of a fox, Mao decided on the latter.

As much as it saddened him to realize his pride had helped destroy Wang Zuocai’s s mind, Mao heaved a sigh of relief. That bit about Nixon and the Great Wall really had him going for a moment.

Still, crazy or not, Wang Zuocai was still too great a liability—and potentially still useful—to simply toss into a Beijing sanitarium. So Mao ordered him bundled off to the arctic frontier of Heilongjiang Province, to be tended by nurses and doctors better suited to the treating of farm animals, for the rest of his natural life. This, as it turned out, proved considerably longer than that of the Great Leader’s.

In the decades since his commitment, he’d only had two visitors. The first was in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping asked the straitjacketed Wang Zuocai two questions, and then never returned. The second visitor arrived thirty-five years later, pouring herself through his solitary window, her skin glowing like a glass of plum wine held before a candle flame.

Wang Zuocai silently watched as she moved to where he lay shackled on his bed, her feet skimming the tile floor. Although he had not set foot on them in years, he knew the tiles had to be cold because everything in Mohe was cold. For someone such as himself, born and bred in the warmer southern climes, it was never warm enough. But all that was about to change. The glowing woman smiled down at him, radiating a heat that sank through his wrinkled skin and into his ancient bones. How long had it been since he’d last known a woman? As it was, it was half a century since he’d last been able to touch himself.

The woman gestured with her hands and the canvas straitjacket that was Wang Zuocai’s only article of clothing disintegrated as if made from tissue paper. Freed at last, his member rose to greet its demurely smiling liberator, undaunted by age.

Wang Zuocai had foreseen this strange night encounter the day he spoke to Mao about Madame Mao having the head of a fox. He knew that the Chairman would dismiss him as mad and have him locked away, but that was the only way he could ensure his survival during the coming years of turmoil, with its Cultural Revolution, Gang of Four, Tiananmen Square and Tangshan and Sichuan earthquakes. He had to make sure he lived to see the arrival of a beautiful glowing woman, who would make him the father of a new and wondrous race.

Once his celestial lover was through with him, Wang Zuocai felt something in his chest fold in on itself. After all the planning, all the waiting, everything was happening so fast. And as his seed quickened, Wang Zuocai’s long, unhappy life finally came to its end.

Just as he knew it would, fifty years ago.

Los Angeles, California:

Mavis Bannister was the ladies room attendant at Trop Cher, an exclusive boutique store along Beverly Hills’ famed Rodeo Drive. In fact, it was so exclusive you had to pass a credit check just to window shop. Their clientele was composed entirely of movie stars, rock stars, hedgefund managers and traveling royalty opposed to the idea of shopping alongside those of lesser importance and social standing than themselves.

However, even if you were a living legend, the heir to a foreign throne, or the richest person in the world, at some point you still had to hit the can. And that’s where Mavis came in. It was her job to keep the ‘ladies lounge’, as her employers preferred to call it, as clean as an operating room, stock the stalls with the plushest toilet paper, and replenish the basket of complimentary toiletry and cosmetics between turning the taps of the lavatory sink on and off for ‘visitors’ and providing them with a clean linen towel to dry their hands. And if anyone from TMZ had ever thought to ask, Mavis would have told them that the ultra-rich and super-famous treat public lavatories just like the hoi polloi. You’d be surprised how many couldn’t be bothered to flush—or leave a tip.

Still, tending the jakes of the over-privileged had its perks, such as the times she found a pair of mink-lined gloves left next to the sink, and the hundred dollar bill lying on the floor in one of the stalls. The visitors to Mavis’ bailiwick were so well off they never seemed to miss the things they left behind, or, if they did, assumed they’d dropped it while getting in or out of a limo, not while popping a squat in a public restroom.

Mavis was going over the inventory list for the toiletry basket in her head as she carried a bundle of fresh hand towels into the ladies lounge. Trop Cher would be opening in a few minutes, and she needed to have her station stocked and ready to go by the time the manager unlocked the front door. Although the management didn’t like to advertise the fact, one of the primary reasons they kept an attendant in the ladies lounge was to deter shoplifters, such as the senator’s wife Mavis caught trying to stuff a five thousand dollar cocktail dress into her purse.

As she pushed open the door, she was surprised to hear what sounded like a baby crying. But that was impossible. The store wasn’t open to the public yet. How could someone with a child already be in the ladies room? And she could tell by the timbre and volume of the wails that it had to be a very small infant. She set down the hand towels on the shelf next to her chair inside the door and automatically glanced at the floor beneath the three partitioned stalls, expecting to see a pair legs. Instead, what she saw was a newborn baby swaddled in a discarded newspaper like an order of fish and chips.

Mavis jerked open the door of the stall and snatched up the tiny bundle. The baby stopped crying the moment she picked it up and peered at Mavis with eyes the color of marigolds.

“You poor little thing!” Mavis gasped. She placed the child on the lavatory stand and peeled away the newspaper. He was a boy and apparently healthy, judging from his lungs and the waving of his tiny hands. His dark hair was still damp from birth fluids, and there were a few inches of umbilical cord dangling from his belly button. Whoever the mother was, she must have given birth in one of the stalls…but how was that even possible? The floor of the ladies lounge was spotless, and the store had been closed since eight o’clock the previous night.

“There-there,” she said soothingly as she dampened one of the hand towels and began to clean the waxy layer of vernix from his tiny body. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening, and Mavis turned to see a movie star famed for being “America’s Sweetheart”, standing behind her.

“Call 911!” Mavis barked.

The movie star recoiled, indignant at being ordered about by a ladies room attendant. “Excuse me—?”

“I said call 911! Someone abandoned a baby in one of the stalls!”

America’s Sweetheart’s demeanor quickly changed from haughty to shocked as she frantically dug her iPhone out of her Prada handbag.

Mavis chuckled to herself, taking a moment’s pleasure in the role reversal, then looked down at the baby she held cradled in her arms, wrapped in a clean towel intended for the hands of the super-rich. He couldn’t be more than ten minutes old.

“So where did you come from, little guy?” Mavis sighed, running a work-roughened hand against the baby’s cheek. As if response, the infant looked up at her, revealing eyes the color of marigolds. Although she wasn’t sure, Mavis thought he might be part Asian.

“The police are on the way,” the movie star said, looking over Mavis’ shoulder at the baby. “They’re sending someone from Child Services, too. Ohhh! Look at him! He’s absolutely precious. Too bad the little guy can’t tell us who he belongs to.”

“Maybe the fairies left him behind,” Mavis said with a smile.

When The Dead Die

Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.

—Sophocles, Electra

Chapter Seventeen

As Sonja stepped out of the limo in the Chelsea District, the first thing she saw was a drunk pissing in a doorway. She smiled and tossed the driver an extra twenty. It was good to be back in New York. She shouldered her one piece of luggage— a black nylon duffel bag—and strode in the direction of the subway. She kept a nest in TriBeCa that she bought several years ago via a holding company, but she had learned the hard way to take as circuitous a route as possible to any of her safe houses, just in case she was being watched.

She ducked down into the subway on Eighth Avenue, dropping her vision into the occult spectrum as she did so in order to scan the commuting hordes for signs of the inhuman. There were always Pretender races hidden amongst the bread-and-butter humans in every major city, and New York was no exception.

It was well into the evening rush hour, and the platform was crowded with human and Pretender alike,each eager to get wherever they were headed for the night. A naga dressed in the skin of an elderly Hindu gentleman flared his cobra hood at her in ritual warning before returning to his newspaper. An ogre, his misshapen limbs conveniently hidden by the latest in hiphop fashion, slouched against the wall end the end of the platform. A succubus dressed in the body of a supermodel smiled seductively at the older man gawking at her, unable to see her cyclopean eye and the mane of living worms she wore in place of hair.

Suddenly there was a rush of hot, foul air, and a moment later the A train came thundering out of the tunnel. It screeched to a halt and as the doors opened Sonja spotted a thickset golem sitting beside an elderly Hasidic man. A quick mind scan revealed the old man to be a jeweler carrying a small fortune in diamonds on his person, hence the need for his hulking bodyguard. The golem glanced at her with its clay-colored eyes, but did not seem to consider her a threat.

By the time she emerged from the Chambers Street station twilight had mellowed into early evening. Her nest was located in a six-story building, just off West Broadway.

The first four floors housed a Chinese take-out place, a karate school, a photographer’s studio, and an accounting firm while the top two floors were, theoretically, vacant. Since it was after six o’clock, everything but the take-out joint was closed for the day. The elevator had a collapsible gate and was controlled by a lever that looked that it belonged on the bridge of the Titanic. She halted the elevator at the fifth floor and rolled back the protective gate so she could unlock the metal barrier that allowed access to the foyer.

The barricade opened with a rusty squeal, and Sonja stepped out of the elevator into the fifth floor landing, being careful to avoid the tripwires that lead to the double barreled shotgun and loaded crossbow she’d set up to dissuade uninvited visitors while she was away.

She passed to the far side of the foyer and unlocked yet another door, this one to the fifth-floor loft and entered into total darkness. Not that it mattered. She could read the New York Times in the deepest pit in Carlsbad Caverns without straining her eyes. The loft had the familiar dusty, close smell of a sealed room. Not that it mattered. Her actual her nest was located on the sixth floor. The fifth was entirely empty—save for booby traps and deadfalls. She liked keeping as much space between herself and whatever might be looking for her as possible.

When she renovated the building, she had a new stairwell installed that by passed the fifth and sixth floors on its way to the roof. She kept the original stairway intact, save for sealing the doors to the lower floors with concrete, so she could travel to and from the roof without anyone seeing her. But, since this was still New York City, she also installed a couple of booby traps, just to be on the safe side. As the unlocked the door to her private stairwell, the smell of putrefaction told her one of her traps had been sprung.

She found what was left of the would-be burglar on the sixth floor landing. He’d tripped a deadfall wire, sending a cinder block on the end of a rope flying into his head. Judging from his clothes he had been relatively young, although it was hard to tell since his face had been reduced to pulp. He’d been there at least a month or two, and had rotted to the point where it was impossible to guess his ethnicity. Well, whatever he’d been in life, he was dead now.

Sonja sighed unlocked the door to the loft, careful not to trigger the old box-spring mattress studded with bayonets hinged just above the lintel. The sixth floor was sectioned into three large areas centered on a long hallway. The one closest to the entrance was a fully outfitted workroom with a carpenter’s bench, a huge array of power tools, and a large glass-lined metal tub. Sonja went into the work-room and returned with a blue plastic tarp, which she used to drag the body of her unwelcome guest out of the stairwell. With the help of a few well-chosen power tools, she reduced the dead burglar to his component parts within then minutes. She then tossed the collection of limbs into the glass-lined tub and took one of the industrial-sized bottles of hydrochloric acid bottles from its place inside a cabinet. Although the solution was meant to process metal, it also came in handy for turning troublesome corpses into soup.

Satisfied that her would-be intruder was liquefying nicely, Sonja headed down the hall to the room she kept set aside as her living space. At a thousand square feet, it was positively cavernous by Manhattan rental standards and had a kitchenette in one corner. Thick Persian carpets covered the floor, and a free-standing antique wardrobe, an oversized leather chair, and an old cathode tube television set were the only other pieces of furniture. What had once been a walk-in closet had been converted into a bathroom, with shower stall and toilet, and a lofted bed was attached to the exposed brick wall. There was an inch of dust on every surface and a shriveled orange the size of a walnut in the fridge. Sonja opened the wardrobe, and the smell of cedar filled the room. Inside it were hung several expensive silk suits sealed in protective plastic wrappers, along with half a dozen matching black silk shirts. Four pairs of hand-made Italian shoes littered the floor of the wardrobe. It was all Chaz’s stuff. He’d had a taste for the expensive things in life. Not necessarily good, just expensive. She bundled the suits together and dumped them in the tub with the melting burglar, then went back into the living area and stripped down for a shower.

If she was going to turn up a clue as to where Morgan might be, it would be in the traditional hunting grounds of the urban vampire: the nightclub. And she wanted to look her best if she was going out clubbing.

She hit her first club around midnight. The interior resembled a church, with stained-glass windows and a disc jockey spinning CDs in the pulpit. The waitresses were dressed as mini-skirted nuns, with high heels, and fishnet stockings. There was a lot of lasers and loud music, but the faces that stared back at her through the dance floor fog were all painfully human. She left after fifteen minutes.

The second club was a cavernous space filled with taxidermied animals. A cougar, frozen in mid-leap, reached out for a startled mountain goat, while a moth-eaten grizzly bear towered over the main bar as if warding off bad tippers. The head of a gigantic water buffalo, its nose worn down by club patrons stroking it for luck, peered off into space, eyeing the ghost of the Great White Hunter who had plugged it long decades ago.

As she wended her way through the club-goers, Sonja got the distinct feeling she was being watched— and not just by the dead animals on the wall. She ducked through a beaded curtain into one of the alcoves off the main floor. The walls were painted in fluorescent colors and lit by blacklights. A couple of queens tricked out in Mary Tyler Moore drag were sitting on the king-sized mattress set atop a carpeted dais in the middle of the space, smoking a joint. They looked at her quizzically, and then returned to their conversation.

“So what did you tell Donny?’

“Just that she should go ahead and get big ones. I mean, if she’s planning on dancing to pay for the operation, she ought to give them what they want…”

Sonja grabbed the man shadowing her before he could clear the beaded curtain, slamming him against the wall. She pinned her forearm against his windpipe and pressed her switchblade to the side of his face, a millimeter from his right eye. The drag queens gathered up their purses and exited the alcove as quickly as their platform heels could carry them.

“Tell me why you’re following me, or I’ll put it out,” she hissed.

Her shadow smiled slow and wide, opening his hands to prove they were empty. “No need to get hostile, milady,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”

Sonja let go of his throat, but I did not put away her knife. The man who had been shadowing her was of slight build and about five foot seven, and wore his gray hair in a mare’s nest of tightly woven braids, with ceramic beads, pieces of metal, and what look like knuckle bones worked into his dreadlocks. He wore a loose-fitting black overcoat that reached his ankles, tight-fitting black leather pants, a black velvet dress shirt with a ruffled dickey, and Doc Martens boots that laced all the way up to his knees. Although his hands were finely manicured, the nails of both ring fingers were unnaturally long. Although he smiled easily, his pale blue eyes watched her intently, like a cat trying to calculate the best way to evade the jaws of a dog.

“Why were you following me?” she growled.

“It’s my job to follow…those such as you,” he replied cryptically. His right hand dipped into the breast pocket of his duster and retrieved a printed invitation. “My… employers … are discreet and, shall we say, very discriminating as to whom they allow into their establishment. Their clientele is most select,” He explained as he flourished Sonja the party invitation. “Tell them Jen sent you, milady.” And with that he slipped from the alcove.

Sonja frowned as she studied the invitation. Outwardly it looks no different than any of the ten of thousands of invites and announcements handed out on the New York party circuit every night. The image on the front was that of a naked female torso, the nipples are pierced and connected by a fine filigree chain. On the back was printed, in Gothic script: The Black Grotto at No Exit: W.14th at 10th Avenue. Open to the Trade.

There was a familiar smell to the ink used to print the card. Sonja sniffed it before tasting it with the tip of her tongue. Human blood had been used to mix the ink—and quite a bit of it too. She stepped out of the alcove just as the two drag queens were coming back with the bouncer. Sonja quickly slipped into the confusion of the dance floor and then out the door.

Next stop the Black Grotto.

Chapter Eighteen

The doorman at the No Exit, dressed in black leather chaps and a chrome-studded slave harness, held out his hand as he moved to block Sonja’s path. “Fifty dollars admission,” he growled.

“Jen sent me,” she replied, holding up the invitation.

The bouncer quickly stepped aside, his eyes widening in alarm. “I’m sorry, milady!” he said, with more than a touch of fear in his voice. “I did not realize! Welcome to No Exit. You want the second door on the right after the ladies’ room, in the back of the main hall.”

Sonja walked past the chagrined doorman and into a cinder-block antechamber filled with gym lockers, where an investment banker was trying to wiggle into a latex bodysuit. She passed through a doorway hung with heavy black velvet curtains and headed down a narrow cinder block corridor lit with lurid red spots that make everything seem awash in blood. At the end of the hallway was a large metal door, like that of a bank vault. She turned the handle, and the door hissed open on pneumatic pistons, allowing techno music amplified to the edge of human endurance to pour forth.

The cinder-block and poured-concrete floor motif was continued in the main hall of the No Exit, which was large enough to park a jumbo jet. A bar fashioned from glass bricks occupied the west wall, with a handful of cocktail tables and booths clustered nearby. The north wall was dominated by an elevated stage that boasted a whipping post, along with and a rack of accompanying flails, paddles and chains. A couple hundred people, all in various stages of undress, wandered the floor of the club, which was decorated with torture devices ranging from a rack to an iron maiden. Some had black leather masks over their heads, others wore slave-harnesses, and one patron walked around with a chrome bit in his mouth, the reins held by a pudgy woman stuffed into a Merry Widow corset. All of them, to Sonja’s surprise, proved to be human.

She continued to make her way to the back of the club. As it turned out, the ladies’ room consisted of a couple of toilets surrounded by a waist-high cinder block wall. Next to it was a door guarded by a monstrously huge specimen wearing a zippered fetish mask. For those with eyes to see, it was obvious, even with the hood pulled over his head that the bouncer was an ogre.

“Jen sent me,” she said, flashing the invitation.

The ogre grunted something and swiped a magnetic key-card through the lock securing the door. As he pushed the heavy metal door open, Sonja glimpsed a stairway winding downward into utter darkness. Upon her crossing the threshold, the bouncer quickly re-sealed the entry, leaving her to whatever fate awaited her at the foot of the stairs.

As she descended the spiraling steps, she could hear music—and not the familiar thump of hiphop or techno, but the strains of Mozart. At the bottom of the stairwell was yet another secured door, this one guarded by an ogre too hideous to be mistaken for human, with or without a bondage mask. He rubbed his left tusk as he studied the invitation Sonja handed him. In his huge, gnarled claw it looked like a playing card.

“Jen sent me,” she explained yet again.

The ogre made a snuffling noise like that of a hog rooting for truffles and unlocked the final door with a key the size of a tire iron. “Have a good night,” he oinked.

The only light in the Black Grotto came from low-wattage, red-tinged bulbs, which were largely for the benefit of the human attendants, so they didn’t trip and fall while y working the room. Like most speakeasies, there was a lot of black velvet drapery, antique statuary and Victorian furniture, but what caught Sonja’s eye were the people hanging from the ceiling. Men and women of every ethnic group were represented, suspended, naked, from hooks on piano wire fixed in their flesh. Most of them had been flayed alive, their skin peeled away to expose the muscles that lurk beneath. All of them clutched burning tapers in their hands

Something warm and wet struck Sonja’s hand. She looked up to see a young man suspended directly over her head. The skin on his thighs and calves had been carefully pared away, leaving only the gleaming bone. He smiled down at her like a medieval martyr, his eyes going in and out of focus as he spoke.

“Welcome to the Black Grotto, milady.”

The other human chandeliers took up the greeting, their voices slurred and dreamy.

This is my kind of place, purred the Other.

Too distracted by the flayed chorus to squash the Other’s voice, Sonja licked the blood from the back of her hand and moved on.

There came the whir of a chain being paid out as a woman encased completely in black latex, save for her throat, stepped forward. Her exposed jugular was outfitted with a phlebotomist’s shunt for easy access. The woman’s arms were encased in a single glove and bound behind her back, and she had a leather band cinched about her waist that was affixed to a spool of chain set into the wall. Her face was obscured by a leather bondage mask, the mouth zippered shut from the outside, but her eyes gleamed like a trapped animal’s.

A slender young man dressed in lollipop panties and a starched pinafore stepped forward, holding a solid-gold serving tray in his hands. On it was arranged a syringe and a champagne flute. Sonja shook her head and turned away. As she did so, she spotted the string quartet in the corner. They were playing Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. As she looked closer, she realized that their eyelids were sewn shut and their mouths filled with ball gags.

There was a scream from elsewhere in the club and a naked ten-year-old boy darted out from a curtained booth, blood streaming from the wound in his neck. A vampire dressed in the cassock and collar of a priest dashed after him, hissing angrily. The attendant dressed like Shirley Temple grabbed the frightened boy by the hair and slammed him against the wall, momentarily dazing him.

Before Sonja could intervene, the priest slapped the human who had manhandled the child, snapping his neck and killing him instantly. The naked, bleeding boy knuckled his teary eyes and ran to embrace the vampire. The priest cooed endearments and stroked the boy’s hair as he led him back to the curtained booth.

As the string ensemble switched from Mozart to Purple Haze, an ogre shambled out of the shadows and picked up the body of the dead attendant no more than a suitcase and tossed it over his humped shoulder.

“So you decided to check out the Grotto, after all, eh?”

Sonja turned to find Jen standing behind her, a twist of a smile on his lips. He had his left arm draped over the narrow shoulders of a naked girl who looked to be about sixteen, with heavily painted eyes, like those of an Egyptian priestess.

“My employers would speak with you, milady,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of one of the curtained alcoves.

“When do Renfields have employers instead of a master?” Sonja queried, lifting an eyebrow in surprise. “And who are they that I should care what they want?”

“I am no Renfield, cousin,” Jen replied cryptically as he lifted the heavy velvet curtain and gestured for her to enter. “And as for my employers’ identities, they are their most Serene Majesties Baron Luxor and the Lady Hedera.”

Sonja scowled. Nobles. Of course. Most of the bloodsuckers she had dealt with over the years were minor league, many of them little more than brain-damaged revenants. But every so often she would stumble across a Noble, like Pangloss or Morgan. They tended to be far older and a great deal more powerful than the garden-variety vampires they spawned, and more than a little crazy.

Inside the audience chamber was an antique love seat on which sat a male vampire dressed in nothing but a black leather pouch, a garter belt, black silk stockings, and matching patent-leather pumps. His dark hair, worn is a shaggy Beatles cut, framed a long face that had neither eyebrows nor lashes, and his flesh was so pale it seemed almost translucent, like that of a finely polished opal. A human male wrapped in a latex gimp-suit lay curled at the vampire’s feet like an adoring hound.

Sonja shifted her vision into the occult spectrum so she could the gauge the vampire lord’s aura, and saw it surging and bubbling around his head like boiling sugar. Baron Luxor was, indeed, a Noble of considerable power.

The vampire’s thin lips pulled up in the approximation of a smile. “Ah! The Blue Woman has arrived!”

“You know me?” Sonja asked in surprise.

Baron Luxor nodded, never taking his eyes off her. “The old man told us you would be coming here, sooner or later.”

Sonja frowned. “What old man?”

“Pangloss,” Luxor explained as he stood up, wobbling only slightly on his four-inch heels. “He was the one who told us about you—he said that you were the one who marked Morgan. We found that most impressive.”

“You keep saying ‘we’, but I only see one of you,” Sonja said, glancing about for signs of Luxor’s partner. “Where is this Lady Hedera I’ve heard of?”

Luxor smiled, flashing a brief glimpse of fang. “Oh, she is here. She is never far away from me, no matter where I am.”

Suddenly the vampire’s flesh started to ripple as his muscles began to dance. The vampire lord’s waist abruptly narrowed as if cinched by an invisible hand, while his pectoral muscles began to expand, blossoming into small, but serviceable, breasts. The leather pouch covering his sex deflated as his testicles retracted into his lower abdomen. The bones in Luxor’s face groaned like the timbers on a ship at sea as they molded themselves into a softer, more feminine aspect. Meanwhile, his hair grew even longer, until it spilled over his shoulders. Sonja had to admit to herself that she was impressed. Such tightly controlled shape-shifting is not easy, even amongst Nobles.

Revealed at last, Lady Hedera clapped her hands and the gimp jumped up and scurried off into the shadows, returning a moment later with a silk kimono decorated with butterflies.

“Why do you want to talk to me?” Sonja asked.

“We were told you are a creature of great power,” Lady Hedera replied, her voice a lighter, more feminine version of Baron Luxor’s. “A creature of... purpose. And your purpose is seeing the Lord of the Morning Star dead.”

“What’s that got to do with you?’

“Morgan has been our enemy for centuries,” Lady Hedera explained, producing a syringe from her kimono pocket. She then stuck it into the shunt jutting from the gimp’s inner arm, drawing fresh blood, which she decanted it into a champagne flute.

“Our broods have clashed and struggled with his since the days of the Bourbon kings. Countless Renfields have died in our service, protecting us from his attacks on our person. We would see him destroyed.” She paused to sniff the blood she had just drained, and then sipped it. “Exquisite! Please, do try some,” she said, motioning for Sonja to help herself. “It’s from my private stock, as you can see.”

Sonja felt her palms begin to itch. It had been a couple of days since she’d last fed— and only on animal blood, not human. She eyed the gimp hungrily but shook her head.

Lady Hedera studied her with interest, rolling the champagne flute full of warm blood between her palms. “Ah, yes…the old man told us you had a peculiar attachment to humans. But you have tasted their blood, have you not?’

“Yes,” Sonja replied grudgingly.

“Then why do you hesitate? All the humans you have seen in the Black Grotto are here of their own free will. The world is full of those who seek their own destruction. They are drawn to our kind, like moths to the flame. Certainly you must know that, my dear. They begged us to use them in such a fashion.”

“Even the children?” Sonja countered sharply.

“Runaways, each and every one of them fleeing abusive parents and guardians far more inhumane than us. They come to us for refuge, and we provide it. We show them a love no harsher than what they have already known.”

“I do not believe you,” Sonja said flatly. “I think I’ll see for myself if what you’re saying is true.” She focused her attention on the gimp crouched at Hedera’s feet. As she adjusted her vision, she could see control threads, pulsing like raw veins, sprouting from the latex slave’s head, tethering him to Lady Hedera’s own aura. With a single, concentrated swipe, Sonja severed the leash binding mistress to slave—with instantaneous effects.

The gimp jumped to his feet, yowling in wordless horror as he pulled the mask from his head, revealing himself to be a balding man with the look of a prosperous banker. He clawed frantically at the shunt stuck in the crook of his arm, his eyes bulging out of their sockets like ping-pong balls.

“How dare you!” Lady Hedera shrieked. “How dare you break my leash?”

The gimp’s body snapped like whipcord as the Noble shoved her will back into him. He collapsed on the floor, his lips foaming and limbs twitching spasmodically. There was a ripe, unpleasantly organic smell as he shit his suit.

As Hedera turned to face Sonja, fangs bared in ritual challenge, her features began to slide back into those of Luxor. For a brief moment, Sonja glimpsed the vampire Noble for what it truly was: a walking cadaver with skin the color of tallow, its withered flesh stretched taut over desiccated muscle. Then the horrific apparition disappeared, the illusion of life once more securely in place.

“I’ll take your heart out for that,” Luxor snarled, reaching for her with claw-like hands.

“You can try,” Sonja replied, brandishing her switchblade.

Luxor’s eyes flashed at the sight of the silver blade, and he quickly drew back his hand as if it was a hornet’s nest. “Ssssilver,” he hissed, staring at the knife the same way a cobra follows the motions of a fakir’s flute.

“What’s the matter, your lord and ladyship?” Sonja sneered as she began to back her way out of the audience chamber. “Didn’t Pangloss tell you about my little toy? The one I used to mark both Morgan and him?”

“Put that horrid thing away!” Luxor hissed.

“How about I drive it through your heart if you try and stop me from leaving?” she growled. “So, let me get this straight: you hate Morgan and want me to get him out of your way, is that it? Funny, Pangloss came to me with the same proposal a few years back. You fuckin’ Nobles are all the same: too afraid of one another to get your own hands dirty! Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck that you hate Morgan. I’m going to kill the fucker, but not on behalf of some gender-bending bloodsucker. Oh, and Luxor? Once I’m done with Morgan, I’m going to come back for you. Both of you.”

Chapter Nineteen

She knew she was being followed. Her ‘fan club’ had been stalking her since the Black Grotto, and from what Sonja could sense of its mind, it certainly was not human. No doubt Baron Luxor had sent one of his by-blows to keep an eye on her in hopes of finding out where she kept her nest.

She pretended she didn’t notice she was being shadowed, making sure to screen her own thoughts, just in case Luxor’s errand boy might have something in the way of psychic ability. She sauntered along the West Village streets, headed in the general direction of Alphabet City, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather jacket. Even though it was four in the morning, there were still people on the streets. She passed a handful of party-goers standing outside a Korean deli, clutching tall-boys to their chests as they tried to figure out where to go next. A little farther down the street, a drunken man with a Jersey accent was bellowing into his cell-phone at the top of his lungs.

“Fuck you! Fuck-fuck-fuck!”

As she drew nearer, the drunk attempted to hurl the offending cell-phone at a passing cab, the momentum of his swing throwing him into Sonja as she walked by. The sound he made as she casually strong-armed into a nearby wall was particularly meaty. The string of ‘fucks’ abruptly stop.

She could feel her shadow hesitate as the unconscious drunk sprawled on the sidewalk was tempting. Since she did not want Luxor’s minion to realize she was paying attention, she kept walking towards Houston.

The entrance to the F train stop was in the corner of a tiny, vest-pocket ‘park’ sandwiched between East First Street and East Houston that consisted entirely of asphalt, swing-sets, and courts for basketball and handball and the early morning emptiness give the area genuine urban menace.

As Sonja headed down the stairs to the mezzanine level, she switched into high gear, moving between the cracks in human perception, as all Pretenders do. She flitted past the token booth, pausing for a fraction of a heartbeat to look into the bulletproof cage at the bored Transit Authority worker inside. To Sonja’s eyes the woman was moving as if underwater as she paged through the contents of her Smartphone. If she sensed Sonja’s gaze upon her, it merely registered as a brief shudder of gooseflesh, nothing more.

No alarm was raised as Sonja jumped the turnstile and dashed toward the stairs leading to the uptown platform. She glided downward, keeping to the shadows between the thick red columns that held the roof of the station aloft. Upon reaching the second level she was greeted by a concrete platform that ran the length of East Houston, between First and Second Avenues. The platform was empty save for a solitary drunk, passed out sitting upright on one of the benches because of the wooden dividers splitting it into individual seats in order to keep the homeless from using them as beds. There was a puddle of vomit between the drunk’s shoes, and his head was lolling about on his shoulders as if his neck was broken. If Sonja had been human, she would have been nervous about waiting for a train in such a lonely place.

Instead, she clambered up one of the girder-like support columns and squatted atop the cross-beams, surprising a rat in its nest as she did so. It squealed at her and showed its teeth. She grabbed the rodent and snapped its neck with a twist of her wrist, silencing its complaints, then settled in to await her shadow’s arrival.

A few moments later a male vampire, looking thirty-something years of age, dressed in a nondescript but respectable manner, made his appearance on the platform below. Judging from his clothes, Sonja pegged him as a banker, or possibly some variety of public accountant. In any case, he appeared unobtrusive, but with enough social standing to pass unnoticed by the authorities. It was typical vampire camouflage, at least for the rank-and-file bloodsuckers. Only the older and more powerful Nobles dared to draw attention to them selves.

The vampire was also operating in high gear, which meant he was practically invisible to the human eye. If the drunk suddenly woke up, all he would see would be a flicker of shadow at the corner of his eye. Perhaps, if he was particularly astute, he might suddenly become anxious, for no reason.

Sonja watched in bemusement as her ‘shadow’ flitted back and forth along the platform, snarling in frustration at her apparent disappearance. It seemed Luxor had sent one of his duller drones to follow her.

She waited until the vampire was almost directly under her before dropping down behind him. She tapped him on the shoulder as she landed, and he spun around, snarling angrily.

“Lookin’ for me, dead boy?” she sneered as she punched him in the jaw. The vampire’s mandible swung to one side like a gate on a busted hinge as she continued to plow into him, hitting him in the gut hard enough to lift him off the ground.

The mask of Marvin Milquetoast, CPA crumbled away, and Sonja found herself tangling with a gaunt, red-eyed, nose-less ghoul with three-inch fingernails and breath that could knock a buzzard off a shit wagon. The dead boy shrieked and clawed at her, slicing one side of her face open to the bone.

Within seconds, they were rolling about of the platform, hissing at one another like a couple of wildcats in heat. Luxor’s get was strong, but it lacked stamina, and was accustomed to battening onto nothing more challenging than hapless commuters. He certainly was not used to having a real fight on his hands.

Sonja quickly got the upper hand, straddling the dead boy’s chest as she hammered his skull into the concrete. She knew she should just take out her switchblade and do the deed and leave the rotting excuse for a bloodsucker’s head on his master’s doorstep as a warning, but she was enjoying herself too much.

“Freeze! Police!”

Suddenly there was a gun pressed against the side of her head. Sonja looked up and into the business end of a Glock. The gun was held by the drunk who had, until a moment or two before, been slumped unconscious on the bench. He held up a battered leather wallet, inside of which was pinned a New York Transit Bureau police badge. Sonja cursed herself. She had been so preoccupied with preparing an ambush for the vampire tailing her she had neglected to check to see if the drunk was what he appeared to be.

She let go of the vampire, standing up slowly. The muzzle of the Glock was barely an inch from her head. She could probably take the cop, but she did not want to chance it since a bullet to the head would be fatal to her, vampire or not.

The cop grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and threw her up against the nearest support column. “Hands up where I can see ’em! Keep those fingers spread out, or I’ll fuckin’ break ’em, understand!?” he barked. The cop then turned to address what he assumed to be a victim of a mugging. “Are you all right sir? I’ve got back-up on the way…”

Even as the undercover cop spoke the words, Sonja could hear the wail of approaching sirens from the street two levels above their heads, like the screams of banshees rushing to a feast. As the vampire got to his feet, the policeman got his first good look at the so-called ‘victim’ and instinctively stepped back. The vampire’s lower jaw was dangling by a shred of muscle, revealing a gaping hole and flapping tongue where his mouth should be.

“Sir? Do you need an ambulance?” the cop asked nervously.

The vampire pounced on him like a cat jumping on a tasty mouse, sinking his fangs into his victim’s throat before he could scream. There were a couple of reports that echoed through the tunnels like muffled thunder as the cop fired into his attacker’s midsection. The Glock punched ugly wounds through the vampire’s chest and out his back, but it did not otherwise seem to faze him.

Sonja grabbed the bloodsucker by the top of his head, peeling him off his victim like a leech. The cop clutched his punctured throat, horror and confusion in his eyes as he watched her put the vampire in a hammerlock. The undead beast spat and screamed at her like a bobcat with a hot poker up its ass.

“Get the hell outta here!” Sonja snarled at the stunned policeman. “Now!” He did not wait to be told twice, and quickly scurried toward the stairs that lead to the mezzanine.

“Shut the fuck up!” She hissed at the struggling vampire, and then slammed his head into the nearest girder-like column. “I was going to take your head and send it back to your brood-master as a warning,” Sonja growled. “But then you had to go and get cute and try to tap a cop! That was stupid, dead boy! Very, very stupid!” She emphasized just how stupid by repeatedly banging her captive’s head against the support column. The sirens were almost on top of them by now.

Suddenly there was a loud rumbling noise, and the platform began to vibrate beneath Sonja’s feet. The tunnel abruptly gusted forth a hot, gritty wind that smelled of piss and electricity.

A couple of uniformed Transit Bureau cops came thundering down the metal steps, guns drawn, and eyes a’ bug with adrenaline and fear, only to nearly trip over the wounded undercover officer, who had collapsed on the staircase. One of the cops, who looked more afraid than an armed man should, moved towards Sonja.

“Police! Halt or I’ll shoot!”

Sonja’s response to the command was to hurl the vampire in front of the oncoming train. As she did so, she could see the look of horror on the conductor’s face as he realized what is happening. The train was going exceptionally fast, even for so early in the morning. Possibly he had been alerted as to the trouble at the Second Avenue platform and had been ordered not to stop. The Other finds the conductor’s anguish quite appetizing.

The train rushes by, like a great steel dragon, the wind generated by its passing mussing her hair and forcing her to step back in deference to its blind, automotive power. Clack-clack-rumble –there’s a brief glimpses of bleary, frightened faces peering out from the cars— and then the train was gone, once more swallowed up by the tunnel.

The Transit Bureau cop, momentarily frozen by the passing of the train, still had his gun trained on Sonja, who stood at the edge of the platform, hands upraised. His partner approached from the other side, his gun pointed at her head. She could smell the fear radiating from them, as thick and pungent as a pot roast. It made the Other grow agitated.

“Morning, officer,” she said in a chipper voice.

“You fuckin’ crazy bitch!” the younger Transit Bureau cop snapped. “You threw him off the platform! You just killed that man in cold blood!”

“I beg to differ!” she retorted. “I didn’t kill him—and he is not a man. Well, not a human, anyway. Look for your self,” Sonja said, gesturing to the tracks below.

The younger cop risked a glance over the edge of the platform, only to go pale and cry out in terror.

“Jesus, Diaz!” his partner growled. “You’ve seen jumpers chewed up by trains before! Get a hold of yourself!”

However, instead of listening to his partner, Diaz fired his gun at something down on the tracks.

“Diaz! What the fuck are you doing?” the older cop shouted. He had his cuffs out and was in the process of snapping one of the bracelets onto Sonja’s left wrist. “I ain’t in the mood for bullshit!”

“Neither am I,’ Sonja agreed as she slipped free of his hold, smashing her elbow into his face, dropping him like a bag of suet.

Having exhausted his clip, Diaz backed away from the edge of the platform, his face rigid with fear. Sonja stepped forward and peered down at the vampire—or, rather, what was left of it—she had thrown onto the tracks. The train had cut him in two as neatly as a magician’s saw, chopping him off at the waist. The viscera dangling from his ruined torso looked like party streamers dipped in transmission fluid. Eyes glowing with inhuman hate, the vampire pulled his truncated torso back onto the platform.

Sonja shook her head in amazement. “Buddy, you just do not know when to quit, do you?” she said with a disparaging laugh as the vampire clawed his way toward her, dragging a length of intestine behind him like a gory bridal train.

“Any last words, butt-munch?” she asked, as she took the gun from the cop she had just cold-cocked.

The vampire bared his fangs at her and hissed in response. So she shot him, taking off the top of the dead boy’s head. She then turned to Diaz and smiled, flashing some fang. The younger cop’s eyes nearly leapt from their sockets as he made a mad dash for the stairs.

There were more sirens up top. Sonja could hear the thunder of city-issued shoe leather on pavement. Within seconds, the platform will be swarming with police. It was time for her to leave.

She tossed the older cop’s gun aside as if was a wad of chewing gum and shifted back into high gear. She sped along the platform, away from the arriving phalanx of police, towards the Second Avenue exit. She ghosted up the stairs at Chrystie Street and glided into the long, narrow green space of Sara Delano Roosevelt Park. Morning had broken, and in the earliest moments of dawn, she saw a solitary Chinese man practicing tai-chi in the park. He had the head of a tiger.

Just the start of another day in the Big Apple.

Chapter Twenty

The Great Victoria Desert, Australia:

He could not decide which was hotter, the sun under which he walked or the ground beneath his feet. His skin hung in peeling tatters from his bare shoulders, which were pinker than boiled shrimp. His back felt as if he had lain down on a white-hot Barbie and was covered with blisters the size of walnuts. How long had he been on walkabout? Three days? Four? How long could a man walk naked in Western Australia before dying of exposure or thirst? Two days? Three?

His name was Charlie Gower, and a month ago he worked as a commercial artist in Canberra, designing logos for tinned meat and flavored chips. Then the advertising firm he worked for landed a state-sponsored job. Charlie wasn’t too sure what the campaign was about, but his job was to draw something based on ancient Aboriginal designs. So he bought a few books on the subject for research, including one on Tjurunga, the sacred object art of the Arrente of Central Australia. Charlie had spent art school studying the Old Masters and English landscapes, but the minute he laid eyes on the sinuous, primitive designs, something changed inside him.

Fascinated, Charlie began to look into the history of the tribes— something rarely, if ever, mentioned in his schooling. This, in turn, piqued an interest in his own family history, as the Glowers had been in Australia since the 1850s. Upon investigating the genealogy records at the National Archives in Canberra, he was surprised to discover that he had Arrernte blood in him.

His great-great-great-grandfather, Jeremiah Gower of London, had been arrested for stealing a coat and, at the age of fifteen, was transported to New South Wales to serve his queen and country as convict labor. He finally won his Ticket-of-Leave six years later, but instead of returning to England he chose to stay in the land he had been exiled to and, according to the records, took an Aborigine to wife. All Charlie could find out about her was that she had been of the Wongaranda tribe and that her husband had renamed her Hannah. When he asked Grandfather Gower about it, the old man was scandalized by the suggestion that the family founders had been anything but upstanding and lily-white.

“Where do you get this rubbish about Jeremiah being a convict and married to an Abo?” The Gower patriarch shouted, nearly spitting his false teeth out in disgust. “My great grandfather came here as a guard! And Hannah was white as you and me!”

“I found it in the public records, Grandfather,” Charlie tried to explain. “It’s all digitized and searchable online.”

“Computers! Bunch of nonsense!”

Charlie really had not expected much more from grandfather. The old man’s generation had been raised in shame of its convict and Aborigine heritage, and his parents’ generation wasn’t much better. His mother, a devout Anglican, Christian, was exceptionally worried about his new interest in what she called “pagan art”, and feared it might somehow endanger his immortal soul.

As far as Charlie was concerned, they were all overreacting. He had simply discovered a new hobby, one that stimulated his mind in a way that churning out advertisement layouts could not.

In his study of the Tjurunga, Charlie read about the Dreamtime. It was a time that came before the birth of Man, when beings of great power shaped the land and filled it with all the plants and animals that would ever be. Once their work was done, these beings of power died, transforming their physical bodies into the stars, the rainbows, and the mountains. Their spirits withdrew into their own realm, where they dreamed of Man, whose role it was to serve as guardian of the natural world. Although they were dead, the Dreaming Things still retained power over the physical realm, which they continued to protect as long as Man followed the Great and Secret Plan and continued to commune with the spiritual realm through their dreams.

Charlie found the creation stories and tales of dreaming gods intriguing, in an anthropological sense, but did not really see much difference between the myths of Ancient Greece or the Norse sagas. In the end, they were just a bunch of stories trying to explain why it thundered, where the sun went at night, and where the mountains came from.

Then one night, he had a dream. He was walking naked through a strange and hostile land, both beautiful and frightening in its ruggedness. As he walked under a beating sun, he saw the Rainbow Serpent Wanambi rise from his watery hiding place and stretch himself until he filled the sky with his writhing, endless body. Mudungkala, mother to all Mankind, emerged from a hole in the ground, clutching the three babies that were the first human beings to her withered breasts, and scolded him for being so slow.

“You must hurry, Apari if you would be a father to the new race.”

“My name isn’t Apari,” he replied. “It’s Charlie.”

“Maybe that is the name you wear when you are awake,” Mudungkala told him. “But in the Dreaming you are Apari. And it is best not to keep your bride waiting, no matter what your name is,” the old woman said as she pointed to the horizon.

Charlie looked and saw a beautiful woman in place of the sun, shining as if she held a thousand stars in her belly. The Dream Woman opened her eyes and pinned Charlie to the spot with their golden stare. She smiled and spoke his name.

Apari.

Charlie work up, the Dream Woman’s spectral voice echoing inside his head. Her voice continued to haunt him, making it hard for him to concentrate on the new ad campaign for Kookaburra Lager. The client wanted their mascot to be a kangaroo with a six pack of beer in its pouch, in place of a joey. He did as they asked and turned the finished artwork in, only to find himself called into a conference, where the client announced that they had decided the kangaroo should be wearing a bush hat because that would make it look masculine, and they did not want anyone to accuse them of encouraging pregnant mothers to drink. Of course, they seemed blissfully ignorant of the fact that male kangaroos do not have pouches.

As the client droned on about the importance of kangaroos wearing hats, Charlie heard a woman call his name. His Dreaming name.

Apari.

Charlie’s eyes darted around the conference room, but the only woman was an elderly woman tending the tea trolley.

It is time to go walkabout, the Dream Woman’s voice murmured.

Without saying a word, Charlie stood up from his chair and took off his tie. Everyone in the conference room fell silent and stared at him as if he had just sawed off his right leg.

“Gower! What’s the meaning of this?” his boss blustered.

Charlie did not respond but instead marched out of the room and down the hall to the elevator. He left his jacket on the curb outside the office block where he had reported to work for the last six years. That was what? Three? Four days ago?

He got in his car and drove west for twenty-four hours until first he ran out of petrol. Then he walked along the highway until he came to a road. Then he walked along the road until he came to a track. And when the track disappeared, he left behind the bush and set off into the outback.

Of course, he’d had some help along the way, such as the elderly Pitjantjatjaran who let him ride in the back of his beat-up old Land Rover for a couple hundred miles, and the shape-shifting muramura who, upon seeing how close he was to dying from thirst, came dancing out of the shimmering heat of the desert with an emu egg full of water. Sometimes the muramura looked like kangaroo-headed humans, other times they appeared to have had dingo heads. In any case, they had proven fairly friendly to Charlie.

As he trudged deeper into the outback, all conscious thought, all identity besides that of Apari, flaked away with his peeling skin. All that mattered was the voice of the Dream Woman, drawing him ever westward, like a filing pulled by a magnet. But after struggling for the better part of a day he finally collapsed onto the baked earth, his face turned toward the sun.

As he stared up at the punishing sky with scorched eyes, he saw something bright and glowing fall from the heavens. At first he thought it was a meteorite, but as it came closer, he could see that it had arms and legs. He smiled then, for he recognized the Dream Woman and knew he was not dreaming.

She scooped him up in her golden arms and bore him into the sky, where she wrapped his burnt flesh in soft clouds while coaxing the honey of life from his loins with only the slightest movement of her own.

When Charlie Gower woke up, he was being tended to by a tribe of Ngatatjara living a hundred miles east of Warburton. His skin was darker than a betel nut, and there was what appeared to be tribal scarring on his face and belly. He was not sure if he had done that to himself somewhere along the line or if the Dream Woman was responsible for marking him.

The first day he was in the Ngatatjara camp he wondered how he was going to get home and if he still had a job, or if his boss had found someone else to draw hats on kangaroos. On the second day, he wondered if his family would miss him, or simply heave a sigh of relief. On the third day, he decided to hell with it and declared Charlie Gower dead. From now on there was only Apari, water-dowser and maker of Tjurunga.

And that’s who he was the rest of his life.

Rocinha, Rio de Janiero, Brazil:

João Iglesias and his wife, Mayara lived in a two room shanty in Rocinha, the largest favela in Brazil, located in the city’s Zona Sul, with views of Corcovado in one direction and the ocean to another. Built on a mountain slope, the sprawling hodge-podge of do-it-yourself housing was home to the majority of laborers who tended to the needs of those in the gleaming, ultramodern steel and glass towers below. João made his living as a moto-taxi driver, running his neighbors up and down Rocinha’s steep and narrow streets on his Honda motorbike while Mayara operated a small stand that sold sodas and snacks that her husband ferried up from Rio on his motorcycle.

Their house was essentially a concrete box with a corrugated tin roof, identical to the tens of thousands of other homes stacked along the narrow, twisting streets of the favela. The two rooms consisted of a combination kitchen and living area, and a much smaller sleeping room. The house built into a hillside, so there was little natural light and had few windows, and the ones they did have were fitted by metal bars that could not be removed, like those of a jailhouse. It was drafty in the winter and hot in the summer and the Iglesias family shared a communal toilet with the household next door. João and Mayara dreamed of someday moving to more spacious and pleasant surroundings, but for now this was the best they could afford. At least they had fairly reliable electricity and running water, which was more than Mayara’s sister-in-law did. Every other day she came to fill two five liter containers and take them back to where she lived, so they could flush the toilet in her apartment.

It was close to midnight, and Mayara was still awake, although she had spent all day tending her stall, selling soft drinks and cigarettes to the locals and the occasional Turista brave enough to venture into the favela in search of the “authentic” Rio. She was sitting next to the stove, the only source of heat in the house, and watching her baby sleep with a worried expression on her face.

“Mayara, are you coming to bed?” João was standing in the door to their bedroom, his hair tousled and eyes puffy. His day had been a long one as well.

“Something is wrong with Diego,” she replied. “He’s running a fever.”

“It’s just a cold,” her husband reassured her. “All the nieces and nephews have colds right now.”

Mayara frowned and leaned over her son’s cradle, fussing with the blanket around his feet. “I know. But he is only two weeks old. I should not have left him with your sister. He is still so little…”

“Mayara, we’ve already gone over this,” João said wearily. “We agreed that leaving Diego with Betina was the only thing we can do. Your mother lives too far away, and we cannot afford for you to stay home with the baby. Maybe in a few months, you can take him to work with you, but not right now.”

“You are right, João,” she sighed. “But I can not help but worry. He is our first child.”

João smiled despite his exhaustion and kissed the top of his wife’s head. “It is good that you worry about our son. It means you are a good mother. I worry, too. But I am even more worried that we will not make the rent.”

Mayara held her husband’s hand tightly for a long moment, her eyes never leaving the cradle that held their son. “Go and get some sleep, meu amado. I’ll join you in a little while. I will not be up much longer, I promise.”

João sighed and went back to bed alone, leaving his wife perched on a stool beside the stove as she rocked Diego’s cradle and quietly sang lullabies. A few minutes later Mayara could hear her husband snoring. The sound reminded her of just how tired she was. Her eyelids began to grow heavy, and her head started to nod.

Ten minutes after his mother dozed off, Diego Iglesias stopped breathing.

A few seconds later, a golden light filtered through the bars of the narrow window and the front door opened inward as if unlatched by a phantom hand. Standing on the threshold was a woman with long hair that fluttered about her naked shoulders as if buffeted by secret winds. In her arms was a baby boy with dark hair. The strange woman hovered beside Mayara for a moment, then lifted the lifeless body of little Diego from the cradle, replacing him with her living child. Then, as quickly and silently as she arrived, the glowing woman left, the front door closing and locking itself behind her.

Mayara awoke with a start, blinking in confusion. She looked in the cradle to check on Diego and was both surprised and relieved to find that whatever was wrong with her son had seemingly passed. Diego gurgled happily, waving his little hands at his mother as if in greeting.

Chapter Twenty-One

Something was in the room.

The realization that she was no longer alone trickled into her sleeping brain like water from a leaky tap. At first she was uncertain whether it was the real thing or merely a dream of intrusion until the Other shrieked: Wake up, you stupid bitch! We’ve got company!

Sonja came off the loft in three seconds flat, her fangs extended and hair bristling like a wolf’s hackle. There was no time for her to wonder how they found her and got past the booby traps. She hit the ground ready for combat, her switchblade at ready. But instead of being greeted by an army of pale, undead faces, she found a solitary figure seated in the leather easy chair in front of the TV set.

“No need for alarm, milady,” Jen purred. “I intend you no harm.’

“Then what are you doing here?” She growled.

“My employers wanted to know where you nest,” he replied. “They told me to assign a shadow to you—which you expertly disposed, by the way. But you needn’t fear me. I won’t tell them where you spend your daylight hours.”

“What are you playing at, Renfield?”

“I am not a Renfield,” he said indignantly.

“You’re a human working for vampires,” Sonja retorted. “That makes you a Renfield in my book. Theirs, too, I’d say.”

I work for Luxor and Hedera because it suits my needs, not because they’ve got a slave collar snapped around my mind!” he said, bridling at her words.

“All the more reason for me not to trust you, then,” Sonja said. “At least Renfields do not have much control in what they do, being addicts and all. You, on the other hand, are one of their bellwethers. You lure fellow humans to their doom in order to line your own pockets!”

“I am not a Renfield, nor am I a bellwether,” Jen said stiffly, his eyes flashing blue fire. “I am like you.”

“Don’t make me laugh—or slap you,” she responded with a derisive laugh. “You and I are nothing alike.”

“Perhaps. But you have still misjudged me, milady. I am not human; I am dhampir.”

Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I’ve heard stories of such things—the supposed by-product of vampire-human mating.”

“There are very few of my kind in this world,” Jen said proudly as he smoothed his braided coils like Medusa calming her snakes. “In my case my mother was human.”

“Vampires are dead things, their sperm inert. They may very well be capable of erection, even ejaculation, but they are incapable of reproducing. How could one possibly be your father?”

“I am very well aware of the procreative failings of the living dead,” Jen sniffed. “If you would allow me to continue, I’ll explain. I will admit that my biological father was human enough, although I have no clue as to his identity. Probably some drunken sot with tuppence in his pocket and a hard-on in his pants. As for my mother, she was a Whitechapel streetwalker.

“Shortly after my conception, my mother fell in with a certain gentleman of Noble mien if you get my drift. She became his favorite for a few months—until she began to show her condition. As you know, the sight of a woman with child is anathema to vampires, those who are eternal and unchanging. The withering and dying of their human consorts is one thing—entropy, after all, is the vampire’s handmaiden—but the creation of new life! That is a painful reminder to them that they are forever locked outside the chain of nature. They claim to disdain how humans reproduce, but, in truth, they are deeply envious.

“My mother’s lover cast her aside, but it was too late. I had already been affected by the venom he released into her each time he fed. When I was born, my mother placed me in a foundling home and went off in search of similar lovers, as the damnation they offered her was preferable to the living hell of the London slums. Over the years, my mother developed into a courtesan for those of Noble make. She even had a few lovers besides vampires, such as the occasional vargr princeling and kitsune diplomat. She became quite wealthy and bought a house in a fashionable part of London, which she then turned into a salon of sorts, where she received her clients.

“As for myself, I was always... strange. Underweight, anemic, and of a morbid turn, my life was made a living hell by my warders and fellow inmates. Then, when I was eight years old, my mother suddenly reappeared and took me to live with her. Compared to the brutality and indifference of the foundling home, the world she introduced me to was practically idyllic.

“When I was twelve years old it became increasingly obvious that I was something not quite human. I not only possessed the heightened senses of the vampire, but their innate understanding of what those around me truly desired, even if they did not know it themselves. I could also perceive the world around me as it truly is including those who prey upon the vast herds of humanity. But, by far, my surrogate father’s most lasting contribution was in the realm of longevity.” He paused and tilted his head to one side like a bird. “How old do you think I am?’

“Forty?” Sonja replied with a shrug. “Forty-five?”

“I’ll be one hundred and fifty come next June!” he exclaimed proudly, clapping his hands.

“That’s all well and good, but it still doesn’t answer why you are here, and why I shouldn’t kill you,” Sonja pointed out.

Jen held up one hand, begging her indulgence. “As I have said before, my employers are just that. They are not my liege and lady. I came of age in the very breast of monstrosity, if you will. I have no trouble admitting I feel no kinship towards humans. But neither do I consider myself a vampire. I am a nation unto myself; the lone member of a solitary race. I serve many masters, yet I am slave to none. And, I assure you, I am not here to see Luxor’s petty blood vendetta carried out. I am here on behalf of one known to you; one who considers himself more friend than foe.”

“Pangloss,” Sonja said with a scowl.

Jen nodded as he stood up. “Most astute, milady. He sent me instead of one of his broodlings because of your predilection for slaying vampires on sight. I am to bring you to him.”

“I have no interest in seeing the good doctor again,” Sonja said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve had enough of his trickery. You can tell him what I told Luxor: If he wants Morgan dead, tough. I do not subcontract.”

“You misunderstand the request,” Jen said. “Pangloss doesn’t give a tinker’s dam about Morgan. Not anymore, anyway. He wants to see you for another, far more personal reason.”

“Such as?” she asked skeptically.

“He’s dying.”

Pangloss’ lair was located on the top three floors of a tony apartment building in Gramercy Park. The concierge at the reception desk glowered at Sonja as she entered the foyer of the building. However, upon seeing Jen, his eyes glazed, and his face went slack.

“Pangloss has him conditioned,” Jen stage-whispered as they hurried into the elevators. “Whenever the doorman sees me, he goes into a fugue state. Does not remember who came in or when. Otherwise, he is tough to sneak by unannounced.”

The elevator let them out at the penthouse. A Renfield dressed in pale green surgeon’s scrubs, his hair under a sterile disposable paper cap, greeted them as they exited the car. “Thank goodness you brought her! He is getting worse!”

“The old bastard’s managed to continue for over fifteen hundred years,” Jen sighed, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure he can hold out for another hour or two.”

The Renfield’s eyes hardened, and Sonja could tell he wanted to say— or do— something to the dhampire, but dared act. No doubt the thought of losing his master was making the Renfield jittery. If Pangloss was, indeed, dying, then his Renfields would not only find themselves stuck for a fix, but protection as well.

Jen watched the indignant servant storm off, and then whispered behind his hand: “Renfields! They are all such drama queens!”

They entered a large, handsomely appointed room with a killer view of the Chrysler Building glowing in the night like an art deco syringe. There was an old man seated in a wheelchair in front of a large flat-screen television. The old man turned his head toward them and smiled, revealing fangs the color of antique ivory.

“Hello, my child,” Pangloss rasped. “So good of you to come.”

Despite herself, Sonja was shocked by the vampire’s physical state. When Luxor had called Pangloss the ‘the old man’, she had been puzzled by his choice of words. Now she understood. The last time she had seen him, three years ago, he was no different from the first time they met, back in 1975. He had looked like a healthy, vigorous, and virile man in his early fifties, with only a touch of gray in his hair. But the creature that now sat in the wheelchair before her looked more like end-stage Howard Hughes than classic Cary Grant.

What little hair Pangloss still possessed was the color of a soiled sheet and was now so long it hung almost to the middle of his back. His frame was wasted and his limbs twisted and infirm, with the persistent tremor of Parkinson’s. His hands were wrinkled and looked more like the claws of a vulture. He was swaddled in a white terry-cloth bathrobe and an adult diaper. Sonja moved closer, circling the thing in the wheelchair, trying to find the flaw in the disguise that would tell her it was all a trick. She could not find one.

“How have the mighty fallen, eh?” the aged vampire said with a wheezing laugh. “I can tell you are surprised by my condition. I do not need telepathy to know that.”

“Jen said you were dying, but I really didn’t believe him,” she admitted.

Pangloss smirked and nodded his head. Sonja could not tell if it was in understanding or a body tremor. “Jen is a terrible liar, so he always tells the truth. You would be wise to remember that.” He fixed his rheumy eyes on the dhampire, and for a fleeting second some of the old, self-assured Pangloss came back. “You’ve done what was asked of you. The Renfields should have your pay ready. Go now. I would speak with my granddaughter alone.”

Jen smiled and left the room, pausing to give Sonja a wink before closing the door behind him.

“You must forgive the boy,’ Pangloss wheezed. “His mother indulged him out of guilt for placing him amongst strangers the first years of his life. He fancies himself a dhampire. He is more than a little mad because of it, but not as unstable as the Renfields tend to be. He not only numerous vampires as his clients, but humans as well. His pain threshold is immense, and he can withstand tremendous amounts of physical punishment. He rents himself out to humans with a taste for beatings.”

“I’ve been there,” Sonja muttered.

“But enough about my half-bastard,’ Pangloss grimaced. “Oh, yes, I am the one responsible for his being what he is. Did he not tell you? The two of you are related, as our kind understands such things. Now, let’s get on to business. I suppose you want to know why I sent you those news clippings?”

“I know why you sent them,” Sonja replied. “You wanted to alert me as to Morgan’s whereabouts so I can kill him and you can claim the glory and come off looking like a Big Bad with your bloodsuckin’ buddies.”

Pangloss’ laughter was somewhere between a chuckle and a choking cough that sounded like it might bring up a lung. “My dear child, you have every reason to be suspicious of me. I’ve certainly done nothing to earn your trust in the past. But I am a changed man— or should I say vampire? The Pangloss you see before you is as different on the inside as he is on the outside.” He motioned feebly with one hand in the direction of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the city. “Could you do me a favor, my dear? I would look at the night one last time.”

Sonja grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him towards the window. She was surprised at how little he seemed to weigh. “I know this is going to sound stupid,” she said. “But how can you be dying? I mean, you’re already dead.”

“A good question; and not at all foolish,” Pangloss replied. “There are those who think that we are immortal things. And, by human lights, we are. There are vampires who have continued for thousands of years. I have walked this earth since the days Clovis embraced the Christian god. But all things have their spans. The dead can be destroyed— of that you’re well aware. We can be killed by damaging our brains or spinal cords. We can be burned to death, decapitated, or die from exposure to the sun or silver. Still, we no longer age and are impervious to the host of illnesses that thin the human herds. However, there is one disease that is unique to our kind: the Ennui.”

Sonja frowned. “You mean you’re dying from boredom?”

“Wretched, isn’t it?” Pangloss sighed. “It is fate that awaits all vampires, once we move beyond the night-to-night concerns of keeping ourselves fed. What are brood wars but games of chess using animated game pawns? Why do we tamper in human affairs, if not to keep things interesting? Once we have indulged our appetite, what is left for us? We have spent so much time and energy maintaining the semblance of life, yet we are loath to admit that there is no reason behind any of it, save an instinctual drive to continue our existence.

“In each vampire’s span there comes a time when the ceaseless scheming, plotting, and manipulation loses its allure. When that happens, we begin to question our motives and doubt whether our needs truly are as important as we once imagined them to be. That is when the Ennui sets in, and we begin to die. It is what happened to me. I can trace the beginning of my fall back to Rome, all those years ago, when you marked me with your knife. The wound you dealt me never truly healed.”

Pangloss pulled open his robe and pointed to the long, jagged scar in the middle of his chest, surrounded by scores of paler, almost invisible ones covering his body, ghostly souvenirs of countless battles. Although Sonja knew the wound was over twenty years old, it was still pink and fresh. It was also the only part of him that looked alive. “I have suffered far more grievous injuries in my existence. However, this one refuses to be dismissed,” the old vampire said ruefully. “Whenever I look at it, I am reminded of how close I came to dying at your hand—and all for what? It has forced me to muse about my own mortality, and what I have acts I have committed in my fifteen hundred years on this planet.

“I have known great men, both in the field of power and in the arts. I sat in the court of Charlemagne and watched it fall apart upon his death. I kept council with popes and bishops and cardinals. I watched the plagues sweep through the cities of Europe. I fled the burning of London three times. I witnessed the rise of countries, the fall of kings, and the birth of religions. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bosch, Voltaire, Defoe, Moliere— they all knew me, in my various guises. Yet, I had no real hand in anything that happened, save for when I manipulated others to destroy a marriage or weaken a friendship. My role has never been creative, only that of a parasite, feeding off society’s veins.”

“The other Nobles dismiss me, you know,” Pangloss said, his head trembling so violently Sonja was afraid it might snap off and fall in his lap. “They always have. Just because I refused to take a title like ‘baron’ or ‘count’ or ‘duke’. Instead, I chose to call myself ‘doctor’. That is because I knew better than to lay claim to royalty. Once you do so, they others are on you like leeches, trying to bring you down. They also think me a fool for not feeding on the strongest of the dark emotions. But I have always preferred the petty jealousies and intrigues of artistic cliques to the horrors of concentration camps.

“That idiot Luxor even had the audacity to insult me the last time we crossed paths! No doubt he was hoping to provoke me into declaring a brood war, knowing how weak I have become. Luxor is a coward, and Hedera’s no better! What is the point of continuing if I must spend the remainder of my days dealing with jackanapes such as Luxor? I’ve grown so weary of it all, Sonja. I am so tired now... so very tired.”

“If you have, as you say, lost interest in playing the game, then why did you send for me?” Sonja asked.

Pangloss’ lower lip began to tremble, and she was suddenly reminded of Jacob Thorne as he stood over his wife’s grave. “Because I’m scared,” the vampire admitted. “I’m scared of dying alone. I want you with me when the time comes.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

It was clear Pangloss’ servants did not relish the idea of their master heading of to the Elephant’s Graveyard. They were all very agitated and kept eyeing Sonja cautiously as they talked amongst themselves. The Renfields were particularly distraught.

Sonja found Renfields, in and of themselves, pathetic and loathsome creatures. The vast majority of them were sensitives, of one stripe or another: telepaths, clairvoyants, dowsers, and the like. The two characteristics they all shared was a morbid appetite for their own destruction and a love of the undead that bordered on addiction. Nearly every Renfield she had ever met was heavily dependent on his or her master, who usually provided them with whatever they craved, be it drugs, sex, pain, or merely the ability to control the psychic powers that made life among ordinary humans impossible for them.

Although Renfields definitely played their part in Noble society, Sonja had always wondered why such powerful vampires would lumber themselves with such deeply unstable servants. But now, watching Pangloss’ retinue flutter about their dying master like moths around a fading light, she finally began to understand. Vampires spend their existence doing nothing but taking from others, and by their nature are needful things. But with their Renfields, they could experience, in a twisted fashion, what it was like to be genuinely needed.

“Please, master, I beg you to rethink what you are about to do,” whispered one of the Renfields. He was in his late forties, with wide streaks of gray at his temple, and spoke with a European accent.

“There’s no putting it off, Gustav,” Pangloss replied, levering himself out of his wheelchair. “It’s too far along for me to change back, even if I could.” He took a feeble step forward, and Sonja grabbed his elbow to steady him.

“But, master, what of us?” Gustav asked. “What will become of us once you are gone?”

“You can either make your own way in the world, or offer yourself to another Noble, such as Baron Luxor or the Marquis Caixão. The choice is yours,” Pangloss sighed. “Come, Sonja. It is time for us to go.”

According to Pangloss, there were several necropoleis scattered throughout the great cities of the world, as well as some lost to human memory. All were held as sacred ground to the Pretending Races, no matter their breed. One such burial ground was located in Manhattan, accessible through tunnels interconnected to the old subway system.

“There is an access point in the sub-basement of this apartment building,” the dying vampire explained. “That is why I chose this skyscraper as my final lair.”

The sub-basement was only accessible via a second elevator from the penthouse, and proved to be dark and damp and smelled of rat piss. Sonja helped support Pangloss as they wound their way through stacks of moldering newspapers and collections of steamer trunks dating from the Belle Époque. In the farthest corner of the sub-basement was a narrow, low-set door made of iron, with strange runes chiseled into the lintel, written in the brain-twisting Pretender script. Pangloss produced a key from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her. Sonja fitted the key into the door and gave it a turn. It swung open with a squeal, displacing enough cobwebs to rig a schooner. There was a smell of old earth and stale water and, in the distance, could be heard the rumble of subway cars.

The tunnel that connected the sub-basement to the city’s underground labyrinth of service tunnels and subway tracks was indeed old, shored with rotting timbers and lined with mammoth slabs of natural stone. The walls abruptly shuddered, and a fine rain of dirt and loose mortar settled onto their heads. By Sonja’s reckoning, they were somewhere under the Number Six line.

Pangloss pointed at a set of stone steps that lead upward, worn from the tread of countless feet. The staircase was so narrow, and steep Sonja had to place Pangloss ahead of her while she walked behind him, her hands bracing his back and hips in case he lost his balance. It was a slow, torturous climb, but finally they came to another iron door. Pangloss unlocked it as well, and they emerged from what otherwise appeared to be a maintenance closet into the lobby of Grand Central Terminal.

Pangloss shuffled across the main concourse, leaning on Sonja for support. In the short time since they had left his lair, she could see that he had aged even further. His back was now completely bowed, his head dropped between his shoulders like a turtle’s. Sonja was worried that they might attract notice from one of the employees, or that some well-meaning Good Samaritan might insist on getting a courtesy wheelchair for such an obviously infirm senior citizen. Then she realized that although people were looking right at her and Pangloss, no one seemed to be seeing them. And it wasn’t the usual indifference New Yorkers showed their fellow commuter, either. Without her being aware of it, Pangloss had cast them both in shadow, enabling them to walk among humanity without being seen. Although the old vampire’s body might be decaying, it seemed his psychic abilities were as strong as ever, if not stronger.

As they made their way onto one of the lower platforms, Pangloss abruptly teetered and collapsed onto one knee. As Sonja helped him back onto his feet, she could tell his left kneecap had dissolved.

“I wanted to go to my death on my own two feet, but I fear I left it too late,” he rasped. “I’m afraid…you’ll have to carry me…from here on in.”

Sonja scooped the aged vampires into her arms, and was surprised to find he weighed no more than a bag of dead leaves. She was afraid to tighten her grip on him, for fear he would crumble in her hands like chalk.

Pangloss motioned to the end of the platform. Sonja nodded her understanding, and quickly stepped off the platform onto the tracks below. The tunnel was lit by sodium-light fixtures set into the brakeman alcoves every twenty-five feet. The vaulted brick roof was black from decades of grime, and graffiti smeared the walls.

There was a sudden rumbling from behind them, and Sonja quickly side-stepped into one of the alcoves just before an Amtrak train hurtled by. As she watched the lighted windows flash past, she glimpsed an old woman gaping at her for a quarter of a heartbeat before the train was once more swallowed by the darkness.

A half-mile down the tunnel they came to what looked like a service tunnel, the floor of which was littered with spent rubbers, broken syringes and smashed bottles. Pangloss reached out with a trembling hand and pressed one of the bricks. There was the sound of stone grating on stone, and then the side of the wall opened.

“Hurry,” he whispered. “No human must see the entrance - and live to tell of it.”

Sonja slipped through the opening and the door pivoted back into place. They were standing at the head of yet another set of ancient stone stairs corkscrewing into the earth. There was no light in the antechamber but Sonja’s dark-adapted eyes could see perfectly well in the inky blackness as they descended the stairs.

Pangloss plucked at his robe with long, yellowed talons, his voice as fragile as a cobweb. “Did I ever tell you how much I loved him?”

“Who?”

“Morgan.”

Sonja tensed at the mention of his name, the muscles in her arms going rigid. “I believe you mentioned it, the last time we met.”

“I loved him so very, very much—more than any of the others. I’d had scores of lovers before him, and hundreds since, but he was the only one I viewed as an equal. The only one I loved enough to Make in my image, so we could be together forever. But he betrayed me, in the end. He left me to go off on his own. He said I was not an ambitious enough partner for his tastes. He planned great things for himself, and dreamed that he might step from the shadows and rule the world of man.” Pangloss giggled, his body shivering with the effort. “Well, we know where his ‘great plans’ got him, don’t we, my dear? That is what he gets for trying to use science to meet his ends! Science is a human thing. Whenever our kind tries to use it, it turns in our hands, like an angry serpent. We are things outside nature, beyond reason—perhaps it senses we are not its true master.”

“Science isn’t a force unto itself, like the weather or magic,” Sonja explained. “It’s just... well, it’s just science.”

“That is what you think, but you are wrong.” Pangloss’ voice had taken on the vague, querulous tone of the senile. “Did I tell you I loved him? Loved him better than any of the rest?”

“Yes, I believe you did,” Sonja said patiently.

“I hated him for a long, long time— longer than I loved him, actually. I hated him for at least five centuries. I’ve never hated anything or anyone for that long before. But I forgive him for leaving me and betraying me. It is easier to forgive than hate. It does not use up quite as much energy. You should learn from that, child.”

“I’m not the forgiving kind,” she replied.

“Then why are you carrying me?” For a brief moment, Pangloss’ eyes were no longer cloudy but clear and sharp, only to just as quickly grow vague again. “Whatever happened to that Palmer fellow?” he asked, his voice having resumed its old man’s timbre. “Are you two still together?’”

“No, we split up.”

“That’s a shame,” he said wistfully. “You looked so nice together.”

After what seemed like a small eternity of stairs, they reached a mammoth cavern, which contained a huge labyrinth carved from the living rock. This was Pangloss’ final destination. At the mouth of the necropolis was a huge gate, guarded by a pair of gigantic ogres, their flesh the same color as cave-born lizards.

As they approached, the bigger of the two swiveled his wide, flat head in her direction, revealing twin lumps of jelly where his eyes should be.

“Who go there?’ the blind ogre rumbled.

“I am Doctor Pangloss. I have come here to die,” the old vampire replied.

The ogre sniffed the air again and frowned. Although he might not have eyes, his hearing and sense of smell were very acute. “Who woman?”

“She is Sonja Blue,” Pangloss answered. “She is my grandchild.”

The ogre held a brief conference with his fellow guard—a mere stripling of seven feet—before unlocking the gate, swinging it open as easily as a screen door. “Welcome to the Necropolis of New York. Good journey, Doctor.”

“Thank you, friend ogre,” Pangloss replied humbly.

The interior of the labyrinth reminded Sonja of the catacombs of Rome, with its narrow stone corridors and burial niches carved into the walls. As to be expected, the spaces closest to the entrance were all occupied, so they were forced to travel deeper into the necropolis, past countless dead ogres, naga, kitsune and other less identifiable species of Pretender, in order to find a final resting place.

As she carried him past one of the occupied loculi, Pangloss motioned for her to stop. The aged vampire studied the corpse of what had once been a woman, dressed in the rotting remains of Edwardian finery. Although her face resembled that of an unwrapped mummy, her long blonde hair, plaited into a six-foot-long braid that lay coiled atop her desiccated breasts like a hibernating serpent, possessed an eerie vitality.

Pangloss stared at the dead vampire for a long moment before finally speaking. “The Lady Zavera. I would know her anywhere. I always wondered what had become of her. It never occurred to me that she could have succumbed to the Ennui.”

“Was she a friend of yours?”

“Nobles do not befriend one another—we make alliances,” he replied with a laugh that sounded like paper being crumbled. “In that regard, she was an occasional ally. Ah, well—at least I will not be among strangers.”

After wandering several miles through the labyrinth, Sonja finally located an empty loculus. She carefully eased Pangloss into the narrow stone ledge, where he sighed and smiled as if he was resting on the softest mattress in the world.

“This will do just fine,” he said.

“Are you comfortable?” Sonja asked, shifting about uneasily.

“Yes,” he replied. “But you do not seem to be.”

“I’m not used to the idea of natural death,” she admitted. “It’s not something I have much experience with.”

“Does it frighten you?” he asked, his voice increasingly faint.

“Not really, I just feel…awkward, I guess,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “What does dying feel like? Does it hurt?’

“There is pain, of course. But I have known greater pain than this, and a thousand times over. No, what I feel is not physical. It comes from somewhere beyond the body. It is as if am both empty and yet so full, I am about to explode. After centuries of taking the life-force of others, I am finally full to the brim. That is the funny thing about all this. Even as my body wastes away, my psychic energies are stronger than they have ever been. It is as if I am feeding on myself, just as I once fed on others.” Without warning, Pangloss reached out and grabbed Sonja’s hand. “I’m afraid of what it will be like, Sonja,” he said, his voice trembling with both fear and sadness. “I know that humans seem to have all kinds of options in the After— but what about us? What happens when the dead die? What is there beyond unlife? Do we go to Hell? Or do we go nowhere at all?”

“I don’t know, Pangloss,” she replied honestly.

He tightened his grip on her hand and motioned for her to draw closer. “You have done me a great service, Sonja Blue. Far greater than I deserve. As payment for your kindness, I will tell you something of great value. He loves you as the moth loves the flame, as the mongoose adores the cobra. He…” The vampire’s voice began to tremble. “I’m so sorry, child. It was all for naught, wasn’t it? All the pain, all the death, all the intrigue—in the end, it meant nothing.” The old vampire reached up and touched his face, staring in confusion the wetness on his fingers. “What…what’s this?” he asked in surprise.

“They’re tears,” Sonja whispered.

“At last,” Pangloss smiled.

As the ancient vampire closed his eyes for the last time, his body rapidly withered, like a deflating balloon. At the same time, a burst of energy shot forth from the loculus, putting every hair on Sonja’s head on end. She stumbled backward as what looked like a ball of St. Elmo’s fire bounced back and forth between the walls of the labyrinth like a demented handball before disappearing into the heart of the necropolis.

After a lengthy trek retracing her steps through the subterranean labyrinth, Sonja finally found a stairway leading out of the necropolis, which lead to a hidden doorway in the Glen Span Arch, located in the North Woods, the least-trafficked sector of Central Park. Dawn was already turning the early morning sky a lighter shade of blue, and she felt as if she had just been pulled through a knothole.

As she hurried through the park, she espied a homeless person rummaging through one of the garbage cans. He looked like every other homeless person on the streets of the city, dressed in mismatched, scavenged castoffs, with newspapers stuffed in his shoes. As she drew closer, the homeless man looked up from what he was doing and fixed her with pupil-less eyes the color of gold. It was yet another of the seraphim, going about its business—whatever that might be.

Sonja paused and returned its stare. There was something familiar about this particular seraph, although she could not put her finger on exactly what. It couldn’t be its appearance as all seraphim were indistinguishable from one another. No, the familiarity existed on a far less tangible level than mere physical appearance. With a start, she abruptly realized whom the seraph reminded her of.

Pangloss.

She should have figured it out for herself when Morgan’s tampering with the vampire life cycle produced a baby seraph instead of an infant bloodsucker! Vampires who could no longer bring themselves to feed on the misery of the living evolve into seraphim. It all kind of balanced out, once she thought about it

For what is an angel but a demon yet to fall?

Chapter Twenty-Three

She is here. Lords of the Outer Dark preserve me, she has finally arrived.

I have it on good authority that she was prowling the Black Grotto the other night. It will not be long before she hunts me down. Once that happens, my years of rehearsal will be behind me, and I will be faced with the Real Thing. But am I truly ready? Do I dare cast aside my proxies and step inside the tiger’s cage? Or should I gather my things and flee to some place like Moscow or Papua New Guinea?

Why do I even ask myself such a question? Am I not Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star? In the past, I would no more ponder fleeing than I would walk unprotected in daylight. But that was before Sonja. Curse her, she did more than mark me—that alone was insult enough—but she made me fall in love.

I have prided myself on loving no one and nothing in the seven hundred and fifty-three years I have existed. I have walked throughout my existence without fear of wounds, or capture, or slavery, for I have worn death as my armor. Nothing, living or otherwise, has ever moved my heart to anything but base lust. Love makes a fool even of the shrewdest player— witness how it tricked Pangloss into making me his equal. I merely tolerated the loathsome old pervert’s attentions so I would escape the gelder’s knife and singing castrati in the papal choir for the rest of my life. I have heard from reliable sources that the old fool is dead of Ennui, or close enough to it. Good.

But now, I find myself gazing into the eyes of Medusa, and I find myself smitten. It is not fair that I have found love after all this time, for I do not want it and it will destroy me if I give it half a chance. Such indignity!

—From the Journals of Sir Morgan

Chinatown was proving a hard nut to crack, even for one such as Sonja. All such communities are fiercely cliquish, but none more so than New York’s. Low faan, be they Anglo, Black, or Hispanic, stuck out like sore thumbs in its overcrowded streets, and, unless they were tourists, viewed with suspicion. She could use her telepathic abilities only so far without calling undo attention to herself. Still, there were those who would always provide information—for a price.

There was nothing to distinguish the front of the Yankee China Drugstore from any of the others on the block. Indeed, the windows of the herbal pharmacy were so dusty most passersby automatically assumed it was no longer in business.

A little bell over the threshold rang as Sonja entered the shop, the interior of which was dark and dusty, with a pressed tin ceiling and light fixtures that dated from the early Twentieth century. A twenty-foot-long gilded screen of chrysanthemums and grinning lions blocked the view into the back of the store. A long wooden counter with glass windows displayed mass-produced ceramic Buddhas and even cheaper tea sets with poorly woven wicker handles. Everything for sale was coated with a fine patina of dust.

A young Chinese man dressed in a gray sweat suit stepped out from behind the screen that blocked access to the rest of the store. He looked hesitant and was obviously unprepared for a low faan entering the establishment.

“I’m looking for General Hu Zhao of the Mao Bing.”

The young man shook his head vigorously. “No here. You got wrong place maybe yes?”

“Don’t hand me that pidgin English crap,” Sonja snapped back in Cantonese. “Hu Zhao has been operating out of this store for one hundred and thirty-six years, give or take a month. Now go tell him he’s got a customer!”

“Go back to work, Xiao Iaohu,” purred a masculine voice from behind the screen. “I shall see to our customer.”

Hu Zhao, leader of the Mao Bing, stepped out from behind the gilded screen, fixing her with lambent green eyes. He was outfitted in traditional Mandarin dress, complete with elaborately embroidered dragon robe and had the head of a tiger.

“Greetings, General, it has been a long time since last we met.”

Hu Zhao bowed slightly, his hands still tucked inside the sleeves of his p’u-fu jacket. “As humans estimate such things, it has indeed been many years.”

“I am in dire need of information.”

“Of course,” the were-tiger replied. “Why else would you seek out the leader of the Cat Soldiers? Certainly not to drink tea and gossip while playing Mah Jong.”

“I’m looking for a man. Japanese. Late forties. He has Yakuza tatts, and he’s missing his right eye. His name is Nasakenai. He is a psychic—and a powerful one, at that. He is a Renfield in the service of a vampire called Morgan.’

Hu Zhao removed his hands from his sleeves and picked up an abacus from behind the counter. His nails were over four inches long and tipped by protective gold sheaths that kept them from growing crooked. “I see. And how do you propose paying for such information, provided it is mine to give?”

Sonja produced a bundle wrapped in plain brown paper and twine. A wax seal the color of old blood, bearing the imperial mark of the Ch’ing Dynasty, was affixed to the top of the package. Hu Zhao’s ears moved toward the front of his head.

“This is the yen hop of Emperor Fulin. It is yours.’

Hu Zhao’s claws tore through the paper and twine as easily as they would tissue paper, exposing a black lacquer box, the lid inset with mother-of-pearl in the shape of a peacock. With trembling fingers, he carefully placed the opium box’s contents on the counter. The pipe was made of ivory with silver filigree and a golden mouthpiece. The bowl for the opium was also made of gold as were the dipping needle and the scissors for cutting the bricks into pills. The old soldier quickly regained his composure and bowed to show his appreciation.

“You honor me greatly, my friend. The man you seek is of the Bot Fun Guey, the White Powder Ghosts. The Ghosts are a gang that deals largely in heroin and human cargo. They are known to be vicious in their dealings with others. Until recently, they were relatively small and of no consequence, compared to the On Leong and Hip Sing tongs. But in the last year or so, even since this Nasakenai joined them, they have grown quite powerful. It is rumored that he is a sorcerer.”

Sonja smiled and returned the old general’s bow. “I thank you, Hu Zhao. Perhaps some day soon we can sit and drink tea and gossip. But as of now I have much to do.”

“Be careful, my friend,” he said cautiously. “The White Powder Ghosts are indeed fierce enemies.”

“So am I,” she replied with a smile.

Nasakenai sat with his back to sharks and sipped a cup of fragrant tea. He liked to conduct business at the Red Lotus Restaurant because one entire wall of the establishment was a huge saltwater aquarium tank filled with dog-fish, blowfish, jellyfish, and other colorful denizens of the deep. In the last year, he had turned the Ghosts from a gang of scruffy drug runners into a force to be reckoned with in Chinatown—as well as Tokyo and Hong Kong.

Dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit and equally expensive hand-made shoes, with his hair slicked back and his right eye covered by a black velvet patch embroidered with a dragon, he looked like something out of a Triad movie. It was an appearance he worked hard to cultivate and maintain. He also worked hard to make sure the rumor that he was a black sorcerer was widely known.

Most of the men he commanded were of ethnic Chinese descent and resented having a Japanese leader, so fear was an important part of keeping them in line. But it also helped that it was not a lie—he really did possess powers beyond those of ordinary men. He was descended from a long line of psychics born, or so family legend had it, of a tryst between a peasant girl and a high ninja master. His bloodline had served the Chrysanthemum Throne from the days of Emperor Motohito until the death of Emperor Mutsuhito.

Nasakenai’s ancestors made a point of breeding within the clan in order to cultivating some of the world’s finest psychic talent. Unlike most human sensitives, those of his lineage were known for their mental stability and valued not only by the Imperial Court but the Nobles as well. Whether this had to do with genetics or the rigorous physical and mental training based on the teachings of that long-ago ninja master, not even Nasakenai could say.

The truth of the matter is that the minds of his fellow men were as transparent to him as the aquarium at the Red Lotus—and filled with similar beasts. He could look at someone and within seconds know his hopes, his dreams, his deepest fears and darkest sins. And, if he did not like what he saw within the heads of those around him, all he had to do was reach out and crush them without lifting a finger. He had done so twice–first to the leader of a group of Vietnamese thugs attempting to muscle in on Ghost territory, the second time to a lieutenant he had discovered working a deal with the Hongmen to try and kill him. He had left each victim hemorrhaging liquefied brains from their eyes, ears, and nose.

Of course, no one that he served a master far more powerful than any Triad boss in Hong Kong or Yakuza kumicho in Shinjuku. Nasakenai had served Sir Morgan ever since he won him during a brood war with a Mandarin vampire named Shou Xi, fifteen years ago. Nasakenai was completely and utterly devoted to his master. There was nothing he would not do for him—nothing he had not done. He had even lost his eye in the service of his lord. It was Morgan who had decreed that Nasakenai take control of a struggling Chinatown gang and turn it into one of the most feared and powerful in the city, and Nasakenai dutifully complied. The reason for Sir Morgan taking over the Bot Fun Guey by proxy was simple: he fed far better on the curdled hope of the human cargo smuggled into the country from China than he did on blood.

Nasakenai eyed the main dining room of the Black Lotus, mentally scanning everyone present. The restaurant was on the top floor of a business tower on the edge of Chinatown, a stone’s throw from the Tombs, and the only way in or out was via the elevator that faced the main dining room. Nasakenai always made sure he was facing the elevator. It was late, and the only people still left in the restaurant besides the owner, his wife, and the kitchen staff were his bodyguards, Yuchun and Juda, both who were young, stupid, and sadistic. The only difference between the two was that Yuchun used too much product in his hair while Juda liked to chew an ivory toothpick. No doubt they would go far in the gang. As far as he could tell, no one was thinking anything dangerous—at least in regards to him.

And then the elevator doors pinged open and a cloud of hate boiled into the restaurant like a swarm of angry hornets.

Despite the intensity of the hatred radiating from the woman called Sonja Blue, her physical manner as she stepped out of the elevator into the main dining room was not just nonchalant, but almost insultingly so. The owner of the restaurant stepped forward, smiling nervously and clutching a menu as if it was a shield.

“Very sorry. We are closed. Come back tomorrow, yes?”

Sonja shook her head and pointed at Nasakenai. “I don’t want dinner. I want to speak with that man sitting over there.”

The owner’s smile faltered. “Sorry. Not possible.”

“Take your people and go home,” Sonja said quietly as she slid past him.

Yuchun and Juda stepped forward, blocking her path. They were dressed in cheaper versions of their headman’s suit, which did little to hide their shoulder holsters.

“You go. This not your place,” said Juda, who was the more proficient of the two in English. “You stay; you get hurt, maybe, yes?”

Sonja stroked her chin, weighing the wisdom of the thug’s words. “You know, you’ve got a point there, buddy.” As she turned around, Juda and Yuchun exchanged knowing smirks.

Her fist caught Juda in the side of the head, sending the ivory toothpick in his mouth flying across the room, accompanied by most of his teeth. Some of his friend’s blood splashed Yuchun in the face, causing him to swear and wipe at his eyes with his forearm while trying to go for his gun. To his surprise, his hand closed on nothing but air. He gaped in disbelief at his empty holster, and then looked up to find himself the strange woman pointing his own gun at him.

“Lost something?” she sneered as she slammed the gun-butt between the eyes, dropping him like an ox in a slaughterhouse.

The owner’s wife, standing behind the register, screamed hoarsely into her hands, her eyes starting from her head. The owner ran to her side and grabbed her, pulling her toward the doors that lead to the kitchen.

“I said get out of here!” Sonja said, repeating herself in Cantonese.

The owner and his wife nodded their understanding and bolted for the kitchen, side-stepping Juda. THE bodyguard was kneeling on the floor, spitting up pieces of broken bicuspid like they were Mah Jongg tiles. As Sonja walked past him, the bodyguard clawed at his shoulder holster, only to have her kick him in the side so hard it lifted him off the floor and drove broken ribs into one of his lungs.

Nasakenai glowered darkly at Sonja as she pulled out the chair across the table from him and sat down. “What do you want, rogue?”

“How nice,” she smiled crookedly. “You remember me.”

“One does not soon forget being maimed,” he replied, caressing his velvet eye-patch.

“You know what I want, Renfield,” Sonja said grimly. “Tell me where he is.”

“I will not tell you that, even though he has commanded me to do so.”

Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “You would disobey your master?”

“My loyalty is without question,” Nasakenai replied stiffly. “That is why I defy my master by keeping him safe from you.”

“You must not have much faith in your master if you fear me to such a degree,” Sonja said with a humorless laugh.

“You wounded my master.” Nasakenai’s remaining eye flashed angrily as he spoke. “You ruined that which was without flaw. But I share that blame, for if I had succeeded in killing you that night in San Francisco, he would have never been harmed. I will not fail him a second time.”

“Let’s get to it, then,” Sonja said, placing her hands, palms facing down, onto the table.

“Hai,” Nasakenai replied as he followed suit.

And the battle began.

She was standing in the middle of a Japanese woodblock print. In the distance were hazy mountains, green blobs against a pale blue sky. Closer by was the suggestion of a waterfall, the artful representation of bamboo—but none of it was real, merely a clever approximation of place, nothing more. It was all set-dressing for the no man’s land known as the Place Between Places, the limbo where psychic battles are fought.

There was the sound of silk banners snapping in a high wind and something hurtled down out of the painted sky, knocking her to her knees. There was a blossom of pain and Sonja stared at the hole ripped in the right sleeve of her leather jacket and at the blood welling up from deep scratches scoring her flesh. Although her physical body showed no sign of being harmed, she knew all too well that wounds dealt during psychic combat were all too real.

She looked up into the sky and saw her attacker framed against the heatless sun, fluttering like a kite. The storm dragon grinned down at her, thunderclouds pouring from its flared nostrils as her blood dripped from its razor-sharp talons.

You are strong, Blue Woman, the storm dragon said in Nasakenai’s voice. I grant you that. But you lack finesse. You are like a child, destroying what angers it. In this world, I am the one who is to be feared—not you!

To prove his point, the storm dragon went into a power dive, extending its front claws like landing gear. Sonja tried to run, but it was no use—Nasakenai’s imago was too fast. The dragon snatched her up like a hawk would a fleeing rabbit, sending its talons deep into her belly and back. Sonja kicked and hammered her fists against the imago, coughing blood as she cursed Nasakenai at the top of her lungs.

It ends now. The Renfield’s voice echoed inside her head. You have caused my master much trouble. You not only stole my eye, you stole my master’s love. Once you are destroyed, Morgan will be as he once was. And his love will be mine, and mine alone.

Sonja’s belly abruptly swelled like a balloon, and her throat expanded as well. She opened her mouth as if to scream, her jaws stretching far wider than they could in the world of flesh. Then, with a mighty cough, a three-headed tiger with the tail of a scorpion leapt from the vampire’s mouth, roaring in angry unison.

Sparks flew from the chimera’s multiple mouths, and its roar was that of swords striking shields. The storm-dragon screamed as the chimera’s venomous tail stung its body repeatedly. The coils of the flying serpent flickered and became transparent, revealing Nasakenai hidden within its belly. The chimera pounced on the exposed psychic, sinking its fangs deep into his neck and shaking him like a farm cat killing a field mouse.

Once it was finished, the chimera returned to Sonja and rubbed its left head against her thigh, purring like a bus left in low gear. Sonja stroked the middle head while wiping the blood from the right head’s muzzle.

“Good kitties,” she said with a smile.

When Sonja re-opened her eyes Nasakenai was lying facedown on the table, blood pouring from his ears, nose, and remaining eye, and cerebral fluid trickling out from under his eye-patch. Behind him, the fish in the salt-water wall tank were dead or dying as well. She watched a two-foot-long dogfish thrash out its final agonies and then go still, drifting in the captive current. She pushed back her chair and stood on wobbly feet, scanning the room.

The restaurant owner stood framed in the door of the kitchen, watching her the way the first mammals must have regarded the Tyrannosaurs as they thundered by on their murderous business. She met his terrified gaze and fixed his mind in place as neatly as she would a butterfly with a hat pin.

“The On Leong did this,” she said in Cantonese. “They had to save face because the Ghosts muscled in on their territory.”

The owner of the Red Lotus nodded his head, sounding as if he was talking in his sleep. “Tong war. Most unfortunate.” He then shook his head as if to clear it, staring in horrified silence at the bodies littering his dining room. Thankfully, the On Leong assassins responsible for the massacre were long gone.

He hurried back into the kitchen to check on his wife and the rest of the staff, all of whom were hiding in the walk-in freezer. He had to call 911, but first he needed to calm down his wife. She was not used to the ways of the Americans yet, and it would not do to have her babbling about a demon woman with mirrors for eyes while the police tried to investigate a gang hit.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jen sat astride one of the lions guarding the central branch of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, grinning like a demented bareback rider. It was after midnight and the library had long since closed its doors.

“I got your message,” Sonja said. “What do you want?”

“I heard about Nasakenai. Very impressive, milady. I always found Nasakenai a particularly loathsome specimen, always pretending he was better than the other Renfields because he could control his telepathy without the benefit of drugs.”

“I’m glad you approve.”

Jen leaned forward, resting his chin atop the lion’s chiseled mane. “My, you are unsociable. You really must brush up on your small talk, milady. A little chitchat now and again never hurts.”

“Is there some point to this?” she growled. “Or did you summon me here simply to praise my disposal of a one-eyed psychic?”

Jen sighed and produced a single, long-stemmed black rose and a sealed envelope and tossed them at her feet. “I was told to deliver these to you.”

“By who? Luxor?”

“I told you—I have more than one employer,” Jen replied as he jumped off the back of the lion and disappeared into the surrounding night.

As Sonja retrieved the rose and the envelope she could see that the stem of the flower was made from braided strands of barbed wire and that petals were fashioned from black velvet. As for the envelope, it bore a wax seal embossed with the symbol of a wolf swallowing the moon. Inside the envelope was a folded piece of parchment that bore the message: The Cherub Room @ 2.

The Cherub Room was a trendy nightclub near Columbus Circle that catered to the Bridge and Tunnel crowd. The overall decor was leopard skin, pink vinyl, gold paint and winged babies—and lots of ’em. The pudgy little fucks were everywhere, whether shouldering cornucopia with speakers hidden inside them, holding aloft mirrors, peeing champagne into silver basins, or simply dangling from the ceiling. The overall feeling was not unlike that of being sealed alive inside a box of Valentine’s Day chocolates. Sonja was uncertain why Jen’s employer, whoever he or she might be, would want to meet at such a place—unless they were afraid of what she might do without being surrounded by witnesses.

The thumping of the music and the sickly sweet smell of mixed drinks reminded her of when she first met Morgan. Except it wasn’t her, precisely. It had been Denise, the naive young heiress who made the mistake of getting a little too drunk and allowing herself to be separated from her friends, and then compounded it by getting into a car with a strange man who was not what he appeared to be.

Denise and her friends had gone to the nightclub for a taste of the forbidden fruit of adulthood. They were on vacation in a foreign city, and it made them even stupider than sixteen year old girls already are in the first place. And when Morgan looked at her, Denise felt so beautiful and unique. And not just because of her daddy’s millions, but because Morgan was royalty. He loved her. Just her and nothing else.

Before that night, Denise had known the clumsy kisses of and fumbling hands of boys her own age, but Morgan was something else entirely. He was older and more sophisticated. He promised true romance, the kind every woman dreams of. It was just like the storybooks she had read as a child: she was the ash-pail princess, and he the noble knight. So when he promised to treat her to a night unlike any other, Dennis had eagerly accompanied him into the back of his chauffeured Rolls. Where he then raped her, drank her blood and threw her, naked and dying, onto the streets of London.

As horrible as they were, all of these events were more like recollections of a movie she had once watched instead of something she had experienced herself. All, that is, save for one, the memory of which was so raw and white-hot it could never fade. It was Denise’s final memory—and Sonja’s first as she emerged from that terrible crucible, like Athena from Zeus’ brow: it was of Sir Morgan’s sneering face and the sound of his laughter as he hurled her body into the gutter. It was the one experience she and Denise Thorne truly shared, welding the past to the present.

Suddenly the hair on the back of Sonja’s neck prickled, and her lungs became heavy as if the oxygen in the room had been transformed into mercury. It was only then that she realized the identity of Jen’s mysterious employer. She had felt the same sensation before, years ago. It was the energy that exists between Maker and Made.

She frantically scanned the room and found him standing in the far corner beside a statue of Cupid stringing his bow. Although she knew she had marked him during their last confrontation, she was startled to see the extent of his wounding. The left side of his face was pulled into a permanent sneer, the eye as gray and sightless as a baked fish’s. Where once his hair had been dark, now there was a shock of white starting at his left temple. He was dressed in an understated, exquisitely tailored suit, which somehow succeeded in glamorizing his scars, turning mutilation into a fashion statement.

As she stared at the man responsible for her very existence, she waited for the hate that had been her constant companion and motivating force for so many years to fill her guts with its familiar heat. It did not come, but in its place was a sense of grim satisfaction in knowing that the snip of a girl he had tossed away like so much trash had repaid him for dismissing her so callously.

Morgan stiffened as she drew near, his perpetual leer belying the caution in his remaining eye. He nodded slightly, acknowledging her presence.

“You got my note,” he said. “Good of you to come.”

Sonja felt the chimera shift inside her head as it sensed its old master. As for herself, being so close to him made her muscles vibrate like the cables on a suspension bridge. The closer she got to him, the more she had to fight to keep from twitching like a junkie in need of a fix.

Destroy him, whispered the Other as its wrapped her brain in a crown of thorns.

“You know I’m going to kill you, Morgan,” Sonja said as she wiped at the cold sweat beading her upper lip.

“You’ll try,” he conceded, with a bow of his head. “But not here, and not now.”

Screw being discreet, nail him before he tries to call the chimera back, the Other growled, pushing the thorns even deeper into Sonja’s brain.

“Why do you insist on fighting me, child?” Morgan asked, his voice as soothing as a cool hand on a fevered brow. “Do you still view your condition a curse? I gave you immortality, freedom from the ravages of old age and disease!”

“I did not ask to be made into one of you. I did not ask for any of this,” she snarled.

“Are you so certain of that?” Morgan countered. “You know as well as I that there are humans who seek us out. Luxor’s brothel swarms with them. You responded eagerly to your seduction; I used no beguilement, no mind control to lure you away from your friends.”

“How dare you blame me for that?” She snapped.

Morgan’s smile tried to be charming, but the scars twisted it into something else. “I’m not blaming you, of course. After all, you are not the girl who so willingly followed me from the club that night, are you? You are not Denise Thorne, but a creature of my seed, shaped in my image, hosted within her dead flesh.”

“But Denise did not die,” Sonja replied.

“If that is true, then where is she now?” Morgan countered.

Sonja blinked, uncertain of how to answer. That was a question she had been unable to understand.

What are you doing? The Other demanded, its voice close to hysterical. Can’t you see he is trying to hypnotize you? You have been waiting for this moment for decades! Kill him, and be done with it! Every moment you waste, you put us both in danger!

Morgan reached into his breast pocket and produced a clamshell jewelry case. “I realize now I was a fool to throw such an exquisite thing as you away. What I did in London was a cruel and thoughtless thing. I was your sire, and I turned my back on you and left you to find your own way in a cold and trackless waste, without guidance or protection. You have every right to hate me for bringing you into such a pitiless world. But you have avenged your outrage by marking me. Our scores are now settled, wouldn’t you agree? In order to prove I harbor no ill-will towards you, I make you this peace offering.”He held the case out to her, flicking it open with his thumb. “I hope you like it. I thought you would, at least, appreciate the symbology behind it.”

Lying on the red velvet interior was a black enamel eight-ball pendant shaped like a heart, affixed to a golden chain. As Sonja stared at the pendant, Morgan continued to speak, his voice thick and sweet in her ears, like honey dripping from the comb.

“What happened to Denise Thorne does not concern us. Let us set aside our vendettas and begin our relationship anew.”

Sonja reached out as if in a trance, her fingertips brushing the outside of the case.

Don’t touch it!

The Other’s voice was so loud it made Sonja flinch. She shuddered as if coming out of a trance, and drew back her hand. “What are you trying to pull?” she growled.

“You misunderstand my motives.” Morgan’s tone was still genial, but there was a glimmer of apprehension in his good eye. He abruptly squared his shoulders and straightened himself to his full height. “But we can discuss that later—after we deal with our unexpected company.”

Sonja followed his gaze and saw a half-dozen undead making their way across the dance floor towards them. To the eyes of the humans nightclubbing it up, the six new-comers looked perfectly normal. However, Sonja had no trouble seeing them for what they truly were—walking corpses.

Without realizing it, Sonja suddenly found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with Morgan against the advancing vampires. Although she still had every intention of slaying Morgan, the sudden arrival of six unfriendly vampires necessitated a change in priorities and allegiance.

“They’re Luxor’s brats,” Morgan sniffed in disgust. “That accursed half-bastard of Pangloss’ must have told him I’d be here! Still, I never imagined the hermaphrodite would be so bold!”

“He probably thinks we’ve formed a truce and are teaming up against,” she pointed out.

Morgan nodded in agreement with her assessment. “Luxor is nothing if not paranoid. And Hedera is even worse.”

The air surrounding the assembled vampires abruptly shuddered as they shifted into overdrive en masse. Sonja and Morgan followed suit. The dancers on the floor instantly froze in mid-step, like the images on a paused DVD, and the strobes ceased their stutter, becoming spotlights. The rhythmic thumping bass of the dance music slowed until it sounded like whale song.

Now safely invisible to the human eye, Luxor’s brood cast aside their masks of normalcy, revealing blood-red eyes and gleaming fangs as they surged forward to meet their enemy, yowling like banshees.

Sonja met the first one head on, driving her switchblade into its chest. There was a fleeting moment of confusion on the vampire’s face before it folded around her fist like a punctured pool-toy. Before she could pull the blade free, a female vampire in retro bell-bottoms and a macramé tube-top slammed into her, knocking Sonja to the floor. Sonja quickly rammed her palm into the underside of her attacker’s chin, snapping the lower jaw like a piece of celery. The female vampire shrieked and tried to plunge a hooked thumbnail into her right eye, only to have Sonja bite it off and spit it back into her face.

There was an explosion of pain that filled her eyes with spiraling stars as a vampire wearing steel-toed Doc Martens kicked the side of her head. As he drew back his foot to deliver a second one, she grabbed at his bootlaces and yanked, sending him flying.

As Sonja scrambled back onto her feet, the vampire in the tube-top—now missing a thumb—leapt onto her back, clawing at her face with three-inch-long fingernails. Sonja reclaimed her knife, which was still wedged in the first vampire’s rapidly decomposing chest, and, reversing her grip, rammed it into the female’s left eye. The vampires yowled like a cat in heat and dropped onto the floor, where she flopped about like a landed fish.

Sonja turned to see how Morgan was faring just in time to witness him grab one of his attackers and twist the vampire’s head completely around as if winding a watch stem. The vampire’s eyes blinked, more surprised than pained, then went gray.

Suddenly the vampire who kicked her was back on his feet, driving his head into her gut like a Billy goat, slamming her into a nearby wall with such forced it cracked the plaster. Sonja rammed her switchblade into the back of her attacker’s neck, between the third and fourth vertebrae. The vampire instantly dropped to the floor, his body twitching and jerking as the silver invaded his central nervous system.

As she looked back up, she saw Morgan decapitate the final member of Luxor’s suicide party and hurl the head into the packed dance floor. Despite everything she knew about the bastard, she had to admire his style...

Kill him, the Other growled. Do it now.

“I’m in no shape to take on a Noble of his power, right now,” Sonja muttered under her breath as she nursed her splintered ribs. “Fighting in overdrive is debilitating, and I’ve got a skull fracture and four broken ribs, and what feels like a damaged spleen. If I try to go up against him now, he will tear my head off, just like he did Luxor’s assassins.”

Kill him or you will doom us all.

“Shut up,” she whispered as she turned back to face her. “I’ll do it when I’m good and ready.” But, to her surprise, Morgan was nowhere to be seen. However, the clamshell case was lying on the floor at her feet. She bent down and picked up the pendant, dangling it from its golden chain for a long moment.

As she slipped the hear-shaped eight-ball about her neck, she felt a stab of excruciating pain in her upper left abdomen. From experience, she knew that her spleen had ruptured, and she was bleeding internally. She needed to return to her nest and power down so she could heal. But first she had to kick out of overdrive as it was rapidly depleting her already taxed energy reserves, if she wanted to steer clear of the morgue. She hated waking up to find some coroner splitting her open like a Christmas goose.

As she slipped out of overdrive she was greeted by a chorus of shrill screams as the Cherub Room’s clientele suddenly discovered themselves not only splattered with blood, but the dance floor strewn with mutilated bodies as well.

No doubt the club’s owners would have a hard time explaining the whole thing to the cops. But that is what they get for letting just anyone in the door.

Chapter Twenty-Five

As Sonja returned to her nest downtown, one thought kept buzzing in her bruised and bloodied skull: Why didn’t she kill him?

He was standing right there. It would not have been easy, or clean, but she could have at least tried. But she didn’t. It wasn’t like the first time she saw him, back in San Francisco. Back then she wanted to kill his ass, but good. But there is a dominant-submissive switch that is thrown whenever a vampire's spawn desires to destroy its sire, and it shuts that shit down but good. That’s what prevented her from taking down Morgan when she finally saw him again after all those years. It was a fail-safe, but it was far from infallible. If a vampire had enough willpower, he or she could overthrow their conditioning. But that’s not what happened to her at the Cupid Room. She did not struggle against anything. Instead, it was more like the fire in her belly had simply been extinguished. But why?

Was it because he no longer resembled the Morgan she remembered? Or perhaps it was the sense she had that he had somehow changed in far more subtle ways than the scarring to his face? She had believed such a thing could be possible for a Noble, but after seeing Pangloss in his final hours and his subsequent metamorphosis, she was unsure as to exactly what she did and did not know about Pretenders and the Real World.

The only part of her that still seemed to view Morgan with the same disgust was the Other, who made it clear that it would not be satisfied until he was destroyed and scattered to the winds. But Sonja could not figure out why it had such a hard-on for Morgan. The Other usually preferred wreaking havoc on those weaker than itself. So why was it so hot to slay a predator as dangerous as Morgan? Or had she simply spent so many years fighting the Other, trying to ignore its needs and desires, that she was automatically suspicious of its motives, even when they made perfect sense?

With everything that had happened lately—Judd, Palmer, Lethe, and Pangloss—maybe she needed to call a Time Out and reassess her agenda. Maybe Morgan had a point. Perhaps it’s time for her to put aside her vendetta before she turned into a pathetic, vengeful moron like Luxor, constantly warring with others over perceived slights.

I can not believe what I’m hearing, the Other growled. For decades, you have searched the globe for this fucker. And now you are turning chickenshit just because he said he was sorry and gave you some junk jewelry from Hot Topic?

“Shut up,” she snarled in response to the voice only she could hear. “I’m not going soft if that’s what you are suggesting. I’m just tired, that’s all. I need to heal and sort things out.”

Bullshit! You are looking for excuses not to act because you’re falling in love with him!

“I’m not falling in love with Morgan!” Sonja exclaimed, grimacing at the empty air. “It’s sick to suggest that—even for you!”

I was not talking to you.

“Who else could you be talking to?” Sonja snorted derisively. “Denise? She’s dead…isn’t she?”

‘All in all, it went quite well. Luxor’s little kamikaze squad putting in an appearance worked to my advantage as it weakened her resolve. Good. It will make it easier for me to lull her into a false sense of security.

‘I have seduced thousands upon thousands of women over the centuries. Casanova was a bumbling school boy, in comparison. After all, coercing a woman to surrender her virtue is nothing—I rob them of far more than their maidenheads. I have lured legions of fair women to their doom, but none as deadly and as dangerous as my dearest Sonja. And until those who have come before her, I genuinely do love her. How could I not? The way she handled Luxor’s brats was poetry in motion! She is indeed a prodigy. Most vampires do not attain such poise and self-confidence until they are well into their second century! She is like a samurai blade tempered in the forge of a master smith. No wonder Luxor feared that she and I might team up. Together, no Noble would dare stand against us.

‘If only there was another way. She is a truly magnificent creature. A more regal Noble has never walked the earth. One glance at her, and you can tell she has never scuttled under rocks or into dumpsters to hide from the sun. But, then again, neither has she submitted to the will of another. And that is why she must die. The thought of destroying her pains me, but not as much as the act of loving her does. I can only hope my dress rehearsals have been successful in preparing me for my part.

‘This will be the hardest thing I’ve done since I broke my fealty to Pangloss, five centuries ago. I take no pleasure in what I must do. Even though she ruined my face, turning me into a sneering, one-eyed freak for the rest of eternity, I take no pleasure in plotting her demise. She is the only thing I have ever loved, and I have to kill her. I must kill her. There can be no other end to this.

‘I am Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star. I will be slave to nothing, living or dead. Not even love.’

—from the journals of Sir Morgan

The insistent sound of the cell-phone ringing dragged Sonja from her death-like sleep back to the land of the living. She was always groggy after her body had repaired itself from extensive physical damage, and this time was no different. She groped about in the pitch-black darkness until her hand closed about the phone and brought it to her ear. The caller-ID flashed ‘Jen’.

“How did you get this number?” she growled.

“Is that any way to say hello to a member of the family?” Jen replied puckishly. “And, to answer your question as to how I got this number, let’s just say I have my ways, and leave it at that, shall we?”

“What do you want?”

“Sir Morgan asked me to deliver a message: He would like you to meet him at the Empire State Building’s open-air observation deck—after it closes, of course. Ta-ta.”

Sonja stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. She knew Morgan invitation to meet him atop the Empire State Building was a trap of some sort, but she could not bring herself to decline the opportunity. If he decided to flee again, it might be years, if not decades before she tracked him down again. Yes, she would do as he wanted, and meet him on the observation deck, trick or not.

But, first, she had to tie up a couple of loose ends...

The ogre guarding the door of the Black Grotto moved to block Sonja’s path as she approached. She had gone up against more than one of his kinsmen over the years, and knew they were damn near impossible to take down in hand-to-hand combat. However, all things, Natural and Supernatural, have their weakness. And the ogres’ was their complete lack of psychic powers. For all their fearsome strength, they were even weaker than humans between the ears.

The whites of the ogre’s eyes filled with blood as she squeezed his mind. He made a snuffling noise, like a hog at its troth as cerebral fluid spurted from his nostrils and ears, before finally collapsing in a boneless heap. Sonja stepped over his splayed body without a second glance.

The human chandeliers moaned as she entered the main room; whether in greeting or alarm was impossible to tell. The eyeless chamber musicians halted in mid-performance of Bartók’s String Quartet No. 4 in C Major, sniffing the air nervously, like hunting dogs that have caught scent of a predator circling their camp. Lady Hedera was seated in a throne-like chair, dressed in knee-high stiletto boots and a black Merry Widow corselet as she oversaw the flaying of what had once been a stock analyst from Connecticut in

“Who let you in?” the Black Grotto’s owner snarled, her voice slightly dipping lower as Luxor’s features threatened to emerge from their hiding place. “And thanks for upsetting the décor, by the way; we’ve only just got them to quiet down!”

“I realize I promised I wouldn’t come back until I’d settled with Morgan,” Sonja replied, “but I changed my mind after you sent your spawn to the Cherub Room last night.”

Lady Hedera barked a humorless laugh and cast a knowing look to her surrounding brood. With a single nod of her head, all twelve rose as one. “You must really have a death wish.”

“That may very well be true,” Sonja agreed as she flicked open her switchblade.

“Is that supposed to intimidate me?” Hedera sneered. “Do you think you can stab us all with your little silver knife before we bring you down?”

“No,” Sonja admitted. “I’m only planning on killing you with it.”

“We would say you are droll, Ms. Blue; but we are not amused. Kill the bitch,” Lady Hedera commanded, with a languid wave of her manicured hand.

Luxor and Hedera’s spawn moved forward, their eyes glowing in the darkness of the speakeasy like those of a pack of hyena on the hunt. As they drew closer, Sonja reached into the pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a large aerosol can with a ring attached to its top. Grabbing the ring with her teeth, she gave the canister a hard yank and then tossed it onto the floor between her and the advancing brood. The vampires came to an abrupt halt. Even though a hand grenade would not be enough to kill them, none of Luxor’s gets were particularly eager to have their legs blown off.

There was a loud hissing sound, like that of air escaping from a punctured tire, immediately followed by a thick blue-white smoke. Thinking it was merely a smoke-bomb, the vampires exchanged disdainful smirks amongst themselves…until the one closest to the canister abruptly sank to the ground, clutching at his throat as huge blisters filled with yellowish fluid rapidly appeared on his face and his eyes burst and ran down his ruined cheeks like bloody tears.

As identical blisters appeared on their exposed skin, the other vampires screamed in pain and alarm and began to frantically backpedal away from the rolling cloud. In their hurry to escape, they became entangled in the chains tethering the human ‘vintages’ to the walls of the speakeasy. The ensnared vampires slashed and tore at the hapless, latex-encased slaves as well as each other as the toxic mist closed over them like a phantom fist.

“Wretched creature!” Lady Hedera wailed as blisters rose like loaves of bread on her face. “What hell have you unleashed?”

“You like it?” Sonja grinned. “I got the idea from the aerosol grenades firefighters use to knock-out fires. But instead of releasing a cloud of pressurized free radicals, it uses vaporized colloidal silver. I paid an inventor guy I know to make up a batch for me. This seemed as good a time as any to give it a test run.”

Lady Hedera gave a dreadful shriek, like that of a wildcat, and launched herself at Sonja, fangs exposed and claws extended. The vampire-slayer leapt forward to greet her, the two colliding in mid-air like battling eagles. Hedera grabbed Sonja’s knife-hand by the wrist, blocking her blow while digging manicured talons deep into her throat. Sonja’s free hand snatched one of Hedera’s apple-like breasts free of the corselet’s cup and gave it a vicious twist. As the Noble screamed in pain, her voice dropped in register, and her breast dwindled like a deflating balloon as Lady Hedera hastily fled the field of battle and Baron Luxor made his return.

“There you are,” Sonja grinned.

“I’m going to tear your head off and shit down your neck,” Luxor growled as he dug his nails even deeper into her throat.

Sonja struggled for breath as her blood squirted out from between the vampire lord’s crushing fingers. As her vision started to dim, she grabbed at Luxor’s hair with her free hair and yanked as hard as she could, only to have his entire scalp slough away in her grip like wet newspaper. As she hurled her trophy to the floor, Luxor cried out and dived to retrieve it, surrendering his grip on Sonja’s throat. The vampire knelt down, frantically trying to re-arrange the sodden clump of hair and skin, so it covered his exposed skull, sobbing “My hair…my beautiful hair…my lovely, lovely hair!”

Grimacing in disgust, Sonja leapt onto the distracted Noble and quickly pinned Luxor to the floor. Although vampire’s entire face and upper body were covered in huge, swollen blisters as if he had been dipped into boiling oil, and his eyeballs were beginning to swell in their sockets, his physical strength was not in the least diminished. Luxor bucked and flailed as they grappled, frantically drumming his stiletto heels against the floor like a toddler throwing a tantrum, but Sonja refused to let go. As she drove the silver switchblade into the vampire lord’s heart, he screamed like a diva going for the highest note and then went still. Upon getting to her feet, Sonja could see that the Noble had died mid-transition, with one side eternally Hedera, the other Luxor. Although expending so much energy taking out a powerful vampire before meeting with Morgan might not be the smartest move, she had felt compelled to do so, just in case her rendezvous with her Maker did not turn out as planned.

She glanced about at what remained of the speakeasy. While the silver fog from the aerosol grenade had left the Black Grotto’s human servants and living ‘décor’ untouched, the same could not be said for its clientele. The vampires closest to the grenade when it deployed were destroyed instantly; their bodies liquefying where they dropped. Those farther away were equally doomed, if expiring at a slower rate of speed. They moaned piteously as they crawled about on their hands and knees, every inch of their exposed skin covered in oozing boils, leaving trails behind them like slugs. Sonja quickly moved among them, dispatching them with quick, efficient stabs to the base of the neck.

Mixed amongst the dead vampires strewn about the floor were a good number of Luxor and Hedera’s human servitors, who had the misfortune of getting caught in the stampede to escape the gas. From the looks of it, they had been mauled to death by the panicked vampires. Sonja recognized Luxor and Hedera’s gimp, the one she had momentarily freed on her previous visit, among the casualties as he had managed to pull the hood off his head before he bled out. The rest of the surviving Renfields and gimps were milling about with dazed, shell-shocked looks on their faces. She saw Luxor’s cup-bearer, his party frock now torn and coated in blood, whimpering like a child who has gotten lost at the mall.

As she continued to look around, her attention was drawn to one of the Black Grotto’s ‘private stock’—in this case, a woman in a black latex cat-suit and mask—who was desperately yanking on the chain welded to the corset cinched about her waist. As Sonja stepped forward to help, the captive woman spun about to face her, her eyes filled with terror.

“Go on—get out of here,” Sonja said as she snapped the length of chain with her bare hands.

The woman reached up and pulled the latex mask from her head, revealing a painfully young, terribly pale face, then turned and dashed for the door. However, halfway there, she stopped and turned back to stare at Sonja with haunted eyes.

“Why did you stop them?” The girl croaked, her voice rusty from disuse.

“Someone had to,” she replied.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The observation deck of the Empire State Building, located on the eighty-sixth floor of the most famous once-tallest skyscraper in the world, was officially closed after two in the morning. But nothing is off limits to creatures that can walk unseen by mortal men.

At street level, the wind was not particularly strong, but over eighty stories up was a different matter. Even with the Art Deco windbreaks that also served to keep the suicides at bay, the wind could not be denied as it tugged at Sonja’s hair and clothes like an insistent child demanding her attention.

Morgan was already there, waiting for her, the opera coat he was wearing flapping and snapping like a flag. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the city that lay spread before them like stars reflected in a still pond.

“I knew you would come,” he said without looking at her. “I have to ask: Are you still determined to kill me?”

“What else is there to do?” she replied with a shrug. “I don’t play cards.”

Morgan turned to look at her, favoring her with a twisted smile. “So you do have a sense of humor, then.”

“About some things,” she conceded. “But you’re not one of them.”

His gaze dropped to the eight-ball pendant hanging about her neck, and his contorted smile grew even wider. He nodded to himself and then returned his attention to the city.

“The city is beautiful, is it not?’ he said, gesturing to the horizon. “It’s alive, you know, not unlike a coral reef. Hundreds upon thousands upon millions of humans eating and shitting and fucking and dying in such a cramped physical location, their life forces united on an occult wavelength that they are unaware of.” He pointed in the direction of the Lower East Side. “Right now a drunken husband, enraged by his wife’s refusal to give him sex, is strangling his three-year-old stepson.” Warming to the subject, Morgan moved to the opposite side of the deck, waving a hand toward Central Park. “Police are still searching the park around Harlem Meer for a toddler belonging to a pair of Iowa tourists, who reported snatched the child snatched from his stroller by a Black man. In truth, they accidentally beat the child to death three days ago and buried him in a shallow grave in their backyard before leaving for New York.” Spinning on his heel like a demented weathervane, Morgan pointed at the southwest corner. “A balding closet queen with some minor political clout is chatting up a handsome young man in a piano bar in the West Village. He doesn’t know it yet, but the object of his lust has raped and killed eight older gay men over the last three years, chopping up their bodies and disposing of them in plastic bags along lonely highways upstate.” Morgan swerved again, like a compass needle being drawn to true north. “In Spanish Harlem eight children between the ages of a few months to five years old are locked inside a one-room apartment with nothing but a television set while their parents work minimum wage jobs.” He grabbed one of the pay telescopes mounted on the edge of the railing and swung it about with a laugh. “God, I love this town!”

“I don’t need a tour of the city,” Sonja snarled. “Why did you ask me to meet you here?”

“Because I wished to continue our previous conversation in a location where we’re less likely to be so rudely interrupted.”

“I can guarantee Luxor’s brood will not be showing up unannounced again,” Sonja said with a crooked smile.

Morgan cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “I’m impressed.”

“Don’t be. Nothing has changed between us, Morgan.”

“If that is indeed the case, then why haven’t you attacked me yet?” he asked. “There are no witnesses here, no crowds of innocent bystanders to stay your hand.”

“Maybe I just do not feel like it right now,” she replied tersely.

“Surely you can find a better reason than that!” Morgan chuckled. “We both know you are lying. Are you sure the reason for your lack of action isn’t the fact you realize there is no longer a point to your vendetta?”

“What makes you think you know what’s going through my head?” Sonja snorted, fixing him with an angry glare.

“There is a current that exists between us— do you not feel it? You and I are far more simpatico, far more than any get I’ve Made. We are left hand and right hand; the tide and the shore; yin and yang. We are the same, you and I.”

“I’m nothing like you!” Sonja exclaimed, grimacing in disgust.

“Have you tasted the blood of the living? Answer me truthfully.”

Sonja frowned and looked away. “I try to keep to the bottled stuff, but sometimes it can’t be avoided…”

“Have you ever taken pleasure from the sufferings of others?”

“Yes, but they deserved it…”

“The only difference between you and me, Sonja, is that you still cling to the illusion of your humanity. Indeed, you hold yourself to ideals that the vast majority of them have discarded. I, on the other hand, look at humans and see nothing but mindless, cud-chewing cattle perpetually on the brink of a stampede. But you have somehow gotten it into your head that humans are to be envied instead of used.

“You seem to forget that it wasn’t our kind who invented the Nazi concentration camps, or the Russian gulags, or the Khmer Rouge killing fields, or the Serbian rape camps. Humans had no problem creating those living hells all on their own. Can you blame us for exploiting such fertile sources of nourishment? And it’s not as if you are innocent of feeding on the misery of innocents.”

“I’ve never done anything like that!” Sonja protested.

“Are you so sure of that?” Morgan countered. “Why do you spend so much time in the inner city? It is not just a matter of camouflage. Don’t you feel a high every time you prowl a ghetto neighborhood—the more crime-ridden the better? Doesn’t it make you feel more alive— more alert—to trawl for prey in the most hopeless sectors of town? Oh, I’m sure you tell yourself you are stalking those neighborhoods because that is where your prey is most likely to be. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

Sonja shifted about uncomfortably. Morgan’s insights were proving both disturbing and compelling. Part of her wanted to punch him in the mouth to make him shut up, but another wanted to keep listening.

“Do you know what it is like to be lonely, Sonja?” Morgan’s voice had become very intimate as if they were standing by a country lake instead of high atop a skyscraper. “Do you know what it’s like to be surrounded by people, yet still be painfully, horribly alone? Do you fear that you might someday disappear into the emptiness that once held your heart?”

“Yes,” she replied. Her voice was so quiet she wasn’t sure shed had spoken aloud.

“You know nothing of loneliness,” Morgan hissed, his voice suddenly growing a hard, rusty edge. “You won’t even begin to have an inkling for another century! To stand outside the flow of time and watch those you once called friends and lovers wither away and die is a unique form of Hell. No matter how many servants and consorts you surround yourself with, in the end, you will always be alone. But the worst part is the realization that you have no equal; that there is no companion who can challenge your expectations, or understand what drives you—unless you Make one yourself.

“The problem is finding a suitable candidate. The humans who are drawn to our kind are attracted to our inhumanity, our monstrosity if you will. They love us for what we are not, not for what we are. Those who seek us out are not worthy vessels, yet we Nobles fear Making a strong-willed human in our image. In our society, there are only two positions: master and slave. To not be one is to be the other. So our instinct is to infect the subservient, and avoid those with the inner strength that results in a fellow Noble. We do so out of fear of what might happen when the time comes for them to claim their place in the Ruling Class. To be a true Noble, one must break free of their Maker, if not actually destroy them.”

“You did not kill Pangloss,” Sonja pointed out.

Morgan fell silent for a moment, his face unreadable. “Pangloss did not require killing. When the time came, he recognized me as his better and surrendered his control. As I said, ours is a society of masters and slaves. That is why, in the five centuries since I threw off Pangloss’ yoke, he was never able to harm me.”

“Are you sure it’s not because he still loved you?”

Morgan’s response to this line of questioning was a bitter bark of laughter.

“His last words were of you,” she said. While not completely truthful, neither was it a lie.

“He’s dead, then?” Morgan asked, sounding only slightly surprised.

“Let’s just say the Pangloss you knew no longer exists,” Sonja replied.

Morgan shrugged. “The old bastard has not meant anything to me since the Medici were popes. You, on the other hand, intrigue me. You possess a vitality I find most invigorating. Perhaps it is your extreme youth that inspires me so? All I know is that whenever I think of you, whenever I am with you, I feel as if the world has been remade anew and that it is mine to conqueror.

“I have had numerous brides in my past, but I have yet to take a queen. We could rule the vampire and human worlds alike, you and I,” Morgan said, gesturing to the carpet of winking lights spread before them. “With your immunity to silver and daylight and the power and influence I have accumulated over six centuries of existence, we would be invincible. Every Noble on the face of the earth would either swear allegiance to us or be destroyed. We will be unstoppable. We will be forever.”

“Or I could just kill you.”

“And then what?” Morgan laughed. “Marry? Have children? Prepare for retirement? Killing me will not turn you back into Denise Thorne. And once you have disposed of me, what will you do to occupy yourself in the decades and centuries to come? You will be bored by everything and everyone because no sight will be unseen, no act undone. Nothing will be new to you. Without diversions and stimulation, the Ennui will claim you as it did Pangloss.

“Don’t you see? You have been acting on instinct, doing what comes naturally to our kind, but without understanding the why and wherefore of it all. I blame myself for your ignorance and self-loathing. After all, if I had been there for you, schooling you in the nuances of Noble society, you would not be as confused as you are now.

“You might be able to delude yourself, but you can not lie to me, child. I am your Maker, and when I look at you, your flesh is like glass to me. I can see the darkness that lies coiled within your heart. I know you are weary of constantly battling with yourself and secretly long to surrender the burden of conscience you carry. I know you hunger to embrace your true nature and join me. For we were meant to be together, Sonja. Ignorance and foolish pride have kept us apart— but no longer! Come on, Sonja. It is time to lay down your burden and embrace your destiny.”

His words were so soft, so sweet, so soothing. They seemed to pour their way into her ears and wrap themselves about her brain. She suddenly felt so very, very tired. All she wanted was to curl up and fall into a deep sleep.

He is reeling you in like a fish! The Other shrieked, digging its talons into her forebrain. shrieking and spitting like an enraged mountain lion. Morgan’s an expert at finding vulnerable spots and manipulating them to his advantage! All this sweet talk about being his ‘queen’ is bullshit! Vampires are either masters or slaves! He said so himself! He is putting you in a trance! Wake up, damn you! Wake up and kill him before it is too late!

Sonja staggered backward as white-hot pain ripped through her gray matter, setting off explosions of black stars behind her eyelids.

Why are you letting him do this? The Other demanded as it frantically clawed at the inside of her skull like a trapped cat. Is this how you’ve chosen to punish us for Judd? By letting Morgan turn us into one of his gets?

Morgan smiled as much as his scar would allow as he watched Sonja claw at her temples. He had succeeded in pitting the divided elements of Sonja’s unstable personality against one another. He could see her aura resembled a spiky nimbus, with alternating strobes of red and black. He was reminded of when the gentry paid the Master of Lunacy at Bedlam to watch the madmen ‘at play’.

Divide and conquer, as they say.

She was floating in a great, black void, uncertain which way was up and which way was down. Suddenly the nothingness folded in on itself, like a piece of wadded up by an impatient child, and then just as rapidly unfolded again. Now she was standing on a vast, empty ice field. The wind howled like an angry thing in her ears. A huge, pockmarked moon climbed the starless sky, barely clearing the glaciers on the horizon. The ice beneath her feet gleamed darkly, like the carapace of an insect.

“Where are you?” she called out as she scoured the frigid landscape for sign of her foe. “You can not hide from me for ever!”

The frozen ground abruptly erupted, sending her flying as the Other climbed forth to greet her. Although they had shared the same body for over four decades, Sonja had never truly ‘seen’ it before. And, to tell the truth, she did not really want to know. But now she saw the Other in all her monstrous glory, for the Other was, indeed, female. Her skin was blue, and her breasts hung flat and empty against her ribs, like one of the hag-queens parents used to frighten their children into good behavior during the Dark Ages. She moved like an ape, her red eyes burning with an endless rage, and her hands were like the grasping feet of a bird of prey, with nails as long and sharp as knives. Although she was gaunt as a corpse, her lips were obscenely full and writhed like worms, exposing blackened gums and fearsome teeth.

Sonja got to her feet and pressed the eye of her switchblade. The silver blade leapt forth, glinting in the moonlight. The Other dropped onto all fours and scuttled forward like a scorpion, her joints bending at impossible angles. Sonja tracked the monster as it circled her, making sure to keep the Other within her line of sight. She wondered if this was what the Pretenders saw when they looked at her and shuddered in revulsion.

The Other launch itself at her, its claws tearing at Sonja’s midsection as its fangs strained for her throat. And then all conscious thought fled, replaced by the need to survive…

Morgan watched as Sonja dropped onto the floor of the observation deck, her body contorting in what appeared to be a grand mal seizure. Foam flecked her lips and her limbs flailed as if hooked up to an electro-shock machine. Morgan did not dare get any closer because Sonja still held her switchblade tightly in one fist— and its blade was exposed. The last thing he needed was to get nicked in the leg by the damned thing.

Morgan grimaced and placed his hands over his ears as squeals of psionic static ripped through his head like the scream of a dentist’s drill. He glanced up at the two-hundred and twenty-two foot tower that jutted from the very top of the Empire State Building like a hypodermic needle. The very air about its pinnacle was starting to churn, like thunderheads gathering before a storm. Morgan licked his lips in anticipation.

This was going to be good.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Times Square: Edgar Tryon paced back and forth inside his studio apartment. He had lost his job at the magazine he used to work for a few months back. At first he had told himself that it would not take long for him to find new employment. But now, after four months, fifty resume submissions, and two unsuccessful job interviews he had exhausted his savings and was a month behind on his mortgage—and was about to default on the payment yet again. He chewed his left thumbnail until the blood came...

Lenox Avenue: The baby would not stop crying. Normally it did not bother Yolanda that much, but tonight it was really getting on her nerves. She wished her mother would come home from work so she could go out and hang with her friends. Yolanda had hoped the baby would make her happy. And at first she liked the idea of having something that had no choice but to love her. But now she wished she was still in school and able to go out whenever she felt like it...

Gramercy Park: Normally, Sam was fun to be around. He was Cindy’s one true love. They met at a friend’s wedding nine months ago. Sam was a struggling actor. Cindy worked for an investment firm. One thing led to another, and now they were sharing an apartment on the Upper East Side. All their friends envied them their lives. Even strangers commented on how happy the couple seemed to be together. Sam was normally supportive of her. But tonight was proving to be a major exception. He was in a really foul mood for no real reason, slamming down beers and making hurtful comments about her weight, her taste in friends and her intelligence. Once or twice she had caught him looking at her with this weird look on his face. As Cindy stood in front of the kitchen sink, washing the dishes, she began to think about she supported them both. Sam waited tables because he had to keep himself free for any acting gig that might come his way. Although they both worked eight-hour days, somehow she seemed to be the one to find the time to wash the dishes, handle the laundry, and clean the apartment. The more Cindy thought about it, the more unfair it became. No doubt he was planning on dumping her for some cute young thing the moment he got a break in his career. She was fuming by the time she dumped the silverware into the soapy water…

Broadway: Father Ignatius closed his eyes and prayed for the visions to go away. Holy men were supposed to have visions, or, so the Bible claimed. But the visions that afflicted Father Ignatius were far from spiritual. He can see his mother sitting in their old apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, in her chair next to the window, fanning herself and looking through the chintz curtains at the street below. Sweating and fanning. Sweating and fanning. Her dress is open, exposing her massive breasts. Sweating and fanning. Sweating and fanning. She stares out the window, as if he wasn’t in the room. She hitches her skirt over her hips and, without taking her eyes off the street, begins massaging the thing between her legs. The room smells of animals. She twitches and moans as if she has hurt herself. Then she turns and looks directly at Father Ignatius and smiles, exposing bare gums. She is missing her upper plate. His mother is seventy-two years old...

As Morgan watched from a safe distance, Sonja’s body abruptly arched, bowing itself until she was balanced on the top of her skull and the heels of her boots. With a squeal of psionic reverb that threatened to split the lobes of his brain, a finger of dark energy leapt forth from her midsection, hitting the aerial overhead like a reverse lightning strike. The wind grew stronger as the clouds gathering in the sky above began to swell even further as if filling with pus.

He cursed under his breath and pulled the gun from pocket. Normally he had no use for such crude weapons and preferred to either kill with his mind or the hands of others. But Sonja was a very special case. One that he had to make sure did not survive.

Too bad it had to be this way. Fighting her would have occupied him for centuries. But, in the end, she was too dangerous to be allowed to continue. She refused to play by the rules. To her, vengeance was more than a game to while away the decades. She was sworn to destroy him and, sooner or later, she would do just that. But what made her even more dangerous to him was the fact she had made him love her. And to love is to be weak, and weakness leads to slavery.

He sighted down the barrel, aiming at her head. “Farewell, my perfect love,” he whispered as he pulled the trigger.

Sonja launched herself at the Other, knocking her to the ground. She quickly straddled the blue-skinned hag, grabbing her by the hair and hammering her head against the ice. The wind that blew across the frozen void shrieked in her ears. She had never been so happy before in her life. It felt so good to truly let go and fight without restraint. It was a feeling of freedom, of being severed from time and place and identity.

He is going to kill us, the Other snarled as she slashed at Sonja with her razor-sharp claws.

Sonja responded by kicking the Other in the mouth, sending teeth flying like Chiclets. “I don’t care! I’m sick of hearing your fucking voice screeching inside my head every damn day! You have ruined everything for me! And now it’s time I got rid of you!”

What about me? The Other replied as she wiped the blood from her mouth. You think I’ve enjoyed being cooped up with a fucking Goody Two-Shoes all this time? You’re always wallowing in self-pity, feeling sorry for yourself because you are a Big Bad Monster. You think that’s a cakewalk for me? Go ahead! Beat on me all you want! Kick me! Punch me! It will not make a damn bit of difference! Face it, I’m here, and there’s nothing you can do to get rid of me that will not kill you as well!

Suddenly the ice field shivered as if shaken by a massive earthquake. The combatants eyed one another.

“Did you do that?” Sonja asked warily.

Fuck no! the Other replied emphatically.

A second later there came a cracking sound and a fissure abruptly zigzagged its way across the icy surface, splitting the ground between the two. There was a roaring sound, like that of the wind howling through a narrow canyon, and the moon overhead shattered like a mirror into a thousand silvery fragments. Then came another, even larger shudder than before and the split in the ground between them became a chasm, hurling them both into darkness.

Gramercy Park: Cindy came out of the kitchen trailing soapy water behind her. In one hand, she clutched a carving knife. Sam was still watching the TV, his back to her. The nape of his neck was the only thing she could see. It was like the rest of him did not even exist. If she squinted, she could see the dotted line going across it…

Times Square: Edgar Tryon heard screams and the sound of crunching bumpers and smashing glass coming from outside his window and went to look. As he peered out his window, he saw a cab barreling along the crowded sidewalk, plowing into pedestrians. The driver was hunched over his steering wheel, grinning like a fiend. A moment later a second cab slammed into a car with Jersey plates. The drivers got out and begin throwing punches at one another until the cabby grabbed the guy from Jersey and rammed his head through the windshield of the hack. Suddenly a lit Molotov cocktail sailed through the air, smashing through the front window of the Original Famous Ray’s pizza stand across the street, which promptly erupted into flame.

Edgar Tryon turned from the window and went to the closet where he kept the rifle he used whenever he went hunting up north. He started out by sniping at the obvious tourists. He tracked one in particular with his scope—a well-fed, middle-aged Out-Of-Towner lugging bulging bags from the Disney Store and Occitane. He screamed as he shot the tourist as if was shooting part of himself. He continued to scream as he shot another, and then another…

Lenox Avenue: The baby wasn’t crying anymore. The TV was still turned up as loud as it can go, but Yolanda could not hear it. She tossed an empty can of ravioli and a dirty diaper into the garbage can in the kitchen. As she rammed the refuse down further to make some more room in the bag, the baby’s hand popped up, the fingers already starting to stiffen. Yolanda told herself it was just a broken doll, nothing more. She has to hurry in order to get ready for the party.

Broadway: Father Ignatius knelt in the confessional and thanked God for taking away the visions. He wanted to say the rosary, as well, but his prayer beads were still wrapped around the neck of the elderly parishioner on the other side of the partition; the one who reminded him of his mother. The smell of animals fills the confessional.

Central Park: One of the carriage horses reared back on its hind legs as a swarm of homeless people boiled from the surrounding greenery, armed with rocks and sticks and appetite.

Throughout the city, these small apocalypses are replicated again and again as long-suppressed resentments and anger manifest themselves, like a festering wound that finally ruptures, filling the night with the sound of gunfire and sirens. Burning buildings dot the city like candles on a cake as the citizens of Manhattan tear at themselves, locked in a blind, claustrophobic frenzy while those unaffected by the insanity huddle in fear and wonder if what they are witnessing is the end of New York—or the end of the world?

Sonja found herself standing at the bottom of a pit, the sides of which were made of ice. Above her was a patch of sky filled with a wildly pulsing aurora borealis. The Other was also there with her, pacing the cramped confines like a caged panther. The walls of their prison groaned like the timbers of a ship as they moved inexorably closer. If she did not find a way out fast, she would end up ground into a paste. She launched herself at the wall, scrabbling at its glassy surface for purchase, but with no luck.

“Is this some kind of trick of yours?” Sonja growled.

I did nothing to cause this, the Other replied, looking a great deal more concerned than Sonja expected. It must be Morgan’s doing.

There was another rumble that nearly knocked Sonja off her feet and shook jagged slivers of ice and clumps of snow onto the pit. The Other was right. Everything indicated that something serious had occurred to her physical self. But what? She told herself that she was inside her own head, not actually trapped in an icy chasm atop an Antarctic glacier. All she had to do was open her eyes, and she would be back in her own body…

“Hello, down there! Are you alright?”

Sonja jerked her head up in surprise and saw a teen-aged girl kneeling at the edge of the pit. She did not look in the least discomforted by the cold, despite the miniskirt she was wearing.

“I thought you were dead!” Sonja exclaimed.

“That’s what everyone tells me,” Denise Thorne replied. “I’ve come to get you out,” she said as she lowered a length of rope down into the hole.

The Other’s eyes flashed like those of a wild animal and, with a snarl to match, leapt up to try and grab the offered lifeline, only to have Sonja drive her fist into her gut, knocking the wind out of her. As the Other writhed on the ground, Sonja grabbed the rope and quickly climbed free.

“Can we leave her down there?” Denise asked, eyeing the Other like a trapped beast caught in a pitfall. “She scares me.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Sonja grunted as she began to reel the rope back in.

You can not do this! The Other shouted, her voice echoing as if from the bottom of a well. Whether you like it or not—you need me!

Sonja turned to look at Denise. The teenager was hugging herself by the elbows, not because she was cold, but more out of apprehension.

“I really don’t like her,” the missing heiress said, shaking her head.

“I can’t say I’m her biggest fan, either,” Sonja admitted.

“She hurt Judd.” There was a waver in Denise’s voice and the shine of tears in her eyes. “I liked him, you know.”

“Yeah, so did I,” Sonja said softly. “But she is right. We need her.” With a heavy sigh, she uncoiled the rope and tossed it into the pit. “Climb out before I change my mind!” she growled.

As the Other began to clamber forth, there was yet another earthquake. This time it was so strong Sonja lost her footing and began to slide back toward the lip of the pit. Denise cried out in alarm and threw her arms around the vampire-slayer’s waist, anchoring her to the spot.

“I hope we don’t live to regret this,” Denise said as they dug in their heels and hauled the Other from her icy prison.

I see the poor little rich girl has come out to play, The Other said as she got to her feet, cutting her blood-red eyes toward to Denise. The teenager’s cheeks turned bright pink as she moved to hide behind Sonja.

“Leave her alone. The kid helped save your hideous ass,” Sonja replied.

That is true, the Other conceded.

“It’s obvious Morgan wants us at each other’s throats,” Sonja said, holding out her hand. “How about we call a truce?”

Agreed, The Other smiled crookedly, taking Sonja’s hand on her claw. So—what now?

Before Sonja could answer, there came a thunderclap so loud it made the ground shake. It was followed by another peal of thunder, then another, and yet another, each one closer than the last. But it was not until the shadow fell across the ice field that Sonja realized what she was hearing was not an approaching storm—but footsteps.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The first thing Morgan saw as he opened his eyes was a curtain of shimmering green light in the sky above his head. His ears were still ringing as he picked himself off the floor of the observation deck. The second he had fired the gun there had been a flash of light and a clap of thunder, with enough concussive force to throw him again the protective barrier that ringed the deck.

He got to his feet and staggered over to where Sonja lay sprawled on the ground. As he got closer, he could see that his aim had been off, and that instead of blowing her head apart like an overripe cantaloupe, the bullet had grazed the right side of her skull.

To his surprise, she abruptly sat up. Her ever-present sunglasses slid off her nose and dropped into her lap as she was now missing her right ear. She stared up at him with a dazed look on her face as if waking from a drugged sleep.

“Are you all right?” he asked solicitously as he quickly hid the gun in his hand. “You had some kind of seizure…”

“You are right, milord,” she said as Morgan helped her to her feet. “I belong with you. I always have.”

Morgan struggled to keep from laughing as Sonja dropped her forehead onto his shoulder. Perhaps he would not have to kill her, after all. Although it was still too soon to truly tell, he could tell there was something distinctly different about her. The fire in her belly—that which had made her deadly to him and provoked his passion for her—seemed to no longer exist. The idea of crushing her will while keeping her physical shell around as a reminder of his victory appealing, yet, a part of him felt strangely empty at the prospect. Yet another side of him hesitated.

He drew back as Sonja tried to slide her arms about his waist. He looked down into her face, staring into eyes the color of blood. Eyes so very much like his own.

“Hold me,” she sighed.

“Not until you put down your weapon,” he said, pointing to the switchblade she still clutched in her hand. Her fingernails had dug so deeply into the flesh of her palm she looked like she was suffering from stigmata.

Sonja’s face contorted in disgust, and she hurled the silver knife away from her. Morgan smiled and slipped his arms around her, pulling her to him. She felt so soft, so vulnerable. He lowered his face to hers and as their lips brushed, she wrapped her arms about him hungrily, her mouth searching for and finding his own…

Suddenly they were no longer standing atop the Empire State Building but in a Japanese rock garden. Dappled koi swam just below the jade-green surface of the meditation pool at their feet, mouthing crumbs of bread. Morgan’s face was no longer scarred, and he was dressed as a shogun of the Edo period while Sonja was dressed…as Sonja.

Her black leather jacket creaked as she knelt beside the pool and pinched off some more bread, tossing it to the hungry fish. She looked up at Morgan and smiled, her eyes once more hidden behind slivers of mirrored glass, except now the lenses grew out her brow ridge and merged with her cheekbones.

“Are you going to kill me now?” she asked. “Is that why you picked such peaceful scenery? To lull me into trusting you?”

“You are my queen—why should I kill you?” Morgan replied, the corners of his mouth jerking fitfully. Although his features were whole in this world, he had grown accustomed to smiling with only half his face.

“How about because I trashed your plans for world domination and fucked up your face?” Sonja replied with a shrug as she continued to feed the goldfish. “Or because I killed your most trustworthy servant? Or, maybe, simply because I’m dangerous to you? Those are all pretty good reasons.”

“Yes, they are,” he conceded. “Assuming I did want to kill you—what would you do to stop me?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

“I do not believe you.”

Sonja shrugged again. The piece of bread in her hands had yet to dwindle. “Believe what you like. But I will not stop you. I’ll even give back your chimera; assuming you still want it, that is.” She unzipped her jacket and reached inside its breast pocket, removing a small jade statue. As she placed it onto the ground, the figurine began to twitch and writhe, growing larger and larger. Within seconds, the three-headed tiger with the scorpion tail was standing beside her, lashing its barbed tail and growling. Then is began to melt and warp, like a chalk drawing caught in the rain until it disappeared entirely, only to manifest itself as a Yazuka tattoo on Morgan’s bare chest.

“There. You can kill me now if you like,” she said, turning her back to him. “I will not stop you.”

She wasn’t lying. She really was not going to stop him. The fight had gone out of her completely. In the past, when he dealt with Sonja he felt like a sport fisherman trying to reel in a marlin. Now there was no more ‘fight’ on the line—just slack. Morgan stepped back and drew his samurai sword from its scabbard. The blade gleamed like a tooth as he held it on high. Sonja turned to look at him one final time and smiled, then returned her attention to the koi pond.

The sword cut through her neck as easily as the air, sending her severed head tumbling into the meditation pool. The body remained upright for a few seconds more, blood gouting from the stump like a fountain, before collapsing to one side.

As Morgan wiped his blade clean, he shook his head in disappointment. After all, this had been the woman who had wrested a part of his very self during combat and made it her own; whose ferocity and deadliness had won his love. He had expected something…more from her.

Suddenly there came a thick, bubbling sound from the direction of the pool. Morgan glanced in its direction and saw that it was a’ boil as if a geyser was about to erupt, turning the water first turned red as blood, then black as ink. As the koi bobbed to the surface, their gill slits straining as they gasped their last, a female figure emerged from the heart of the pool, arising like Aphrodite from the foam.

The woman’s skin was black as polished night, her dark hair thick and wild, like the mane of a lion. Her eyes were a deep red, and her teeth white as pearls and curved into fearsome fangs, with a tongue as long and narrow as a cat’s. She had four arms, and in each hand she gripped an instrument of destruction: a shield, a sword, a noose, and a spear, the point of which was identical to Sonja’s switchblade. Around her neck was a garland of skulls and about her hips she wore a girdle of severed hands. When she turned her head, Morgan could see three other faces: one was that of Denise Thorne, the second that of a blue-skinned hag, and the third belonged to Sonja.

The black-skinned woman nodded to Morgan as if acknowledging a debt. When she spoke, all four of her faces moved their lips as well. “I thank you, Sir Morgan, for unifying the forces within me. Before I was separate and unequal; now I am whole.”

“Who are you?” Morgan asked warily. “What are you doing with Sonja’s face?”

In answer, the ebony-skinned woman struck her shield with her sword, making it ring like a gong. Morgan cried out and clutched his ears at the awful sound.

“I am the Dark One!” She laughed in a multitude of voices as her body began to grow until she was as tall as a tree. “The Queen of the Night! I am the monster that destroys monsters! The Slayer of the Dead!”

Morgan cast aside his human form, his skin becoming mottled and scaly as his head widened and flattened itself and his arms and legs disappeared into his torso. His body doubled, and then quadrupled in size and length until it was the length and breadth of a city bus. Hissing his defiance, Morgan raised his upper body and flared his hood in challenge

The Dark One laughed and began to dance, her four arms weaving in rhythmic patterns as she kept time to some unheard tune. Morgan reared back and spat at her glowing red eyes, but she blocked the venom with her shield.

Morgan struck again, hoping to plunge his fangs into his opponent’s naked thigh, but she moved too fast, slipping her noose about his neck and yanking it tight. Morgan flailed about mightily, his body lashing back and forth like a bullwhip. The Dark One brought her left foot down upon the back of Morgan’s neck with such force it shook the entire world.

The Dark One carefully set aside her weapons while still keeping a firm grip on the head of the giant cobra. Morgan shrieked and hissed and struggled, but there was no wriggling out from under her foot. The destroyer licked her fangs with her long red tongue, her eyes gleaming like polished skulls.

“I have been a long time being born,” the Dark One said with her myriad voices. “And birthing is hungry work.”

>Morgan opened his eyes to find himself back in his body, his arms still wrapped about Sonja. Anyone who might have stumbled across them at that exact moment might have mistaken them for lovers. Morgan grimaced and tried to break free of her embrace, but her grip was like iron.

“You asked me why I fight against what I am,” Sonja said, her eyes burning like funeral pyres. “I did not answer you then because I really wasn’t sure myself. But now I know why I still fight. It is because I still have a soul. It may not be much of one, but it is still mine. And I refuse to surrender it for the likes of you. But you were right about one thing—it’s time I embraced my destiny.” And with that she plunged her fangs into his throat.

Morgan shrieked like a cat boiled alive, clawing frantically at Sonja as she battened onto him as he had done to others so many times before, but it was no use. She did not flinch as his talons sliced her to the bone. Normally vampires could not feed on one another, but Sonja, Morgan now belatedly realized, was as far removed from him as he was from the prostitutes he had used for practice.

As she drained him like a wine sack, the illusion of youth and vitality Morgan had maintained for so many centuries began to falter. His skin became the color and texture of parchment as the shock of white in his raven-dark hair spread outward. He began to dwindle, like a sugar cube in the rain, going from well-nourished to thin to gaunt to emaciated in the space of a few heartbeats. His hair, now the color of snow, began to fall away in drifts, until he was completely bald.

“Enough,” he wheezed. “Stop.” But, of course, she did not. Morgan’s voice rose in a piteous wail as his eyes retreated into the back of his skull like slugs. His limbs withered and drew in on themselves, like the legs of a dying spider, and still she continued to feed. Only when she had finally had her fill, did Sonja retract her fangs and open her eyes. She grimaced at the sight of the withered thing in her arms and, with an exclamation of disgust, cast it roughly aside, just as he had tossed her into the London gutter, all those years ago.

What was left of Morgan lay at her feet, surrounded by a mound of clothes, looking more like a mummified fetus than an adult male. He lifted his oversized head on its feeble stalk of a neck and looked around with blind eyes, his limbs rattling like those of a marionette.

“Mercy, my child,” the dying vampire begged, in a high, penny-whistle voice.

“I’m not your daughter,” Sonja replied flatly as she brought her boot down on Morgan’s skull. “My father is Jacob Thorne. My mother is dead.” The vampire lord’s head crunched under her heel like a light-bulb.

Her body vibrating like a tuning fork, she looked out at the city spread before her. The madness the Other had released through the Empire State Building’s broadcast tower seemed to hang over midtown Manhattan like a pall of smoke—then realized, with a start, that it was the real thing, created by the fires that dotted the horizon like candles on a birthday cake. As horrible as it was, this negative energy was what had given her the power to unite the disparate identities within her—the human, the vampire, and the vampire-killer—into a cohesive whole.

After years of ignorance and fear, battling the voices inside her head, she finally understood what she truly was. Tonight had been a necessary, but bloody, step in her evolution, taking her from living vampire to Ultimate Predator. She was the monster who kills monsters; the saint of the pit; the holy demon.

Behind her eyes, the Dark One sang her victory song as she danced on the body of her defeated foe, filling Sonja’s ears with the sound of drums and the clashing of swords. Flush with victory and the exhilaration of birth, the newborn Destroyer threw back her head and roared a challenge to the world.

And the monsters, hidden in plain sight, trembled.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It had not taken long for the jungle long to reclaim the house. The front porch was alive with creepers and other blooming vines. A couple of empty Tecate bottles could be glimpsed amidst the overgrowth, and what was left of the hammock dangled like a rotting canvas spider web.

The front door was unlocked, but the frame was so badly warped she accidentally yanked it off its hinges while trying to open it. Inside, the house smelled of mold, rising damp and rotting garbage.

Small lizards skittered out from underfoot as she went from room to room. Although some of the windows were broken, it looked as if it had been months since anyone had last set foot in the house. Not surprising, really. The locals were exceptionally superstitious when it came to La Mujer Llama Azul.

She stepped out into the courtyard. The fountain no longer burbled to itself and weeds now forced their rough heads between the tiles. The back of the house was even more overgrown as the rapidly encroaching jungle had swallowed Lethe’s swing set. A wild pig and her piglets burst from cover at Sonja’s approach, fleeing in the direction of the forest. She followed them, but not with the intention of hunting.

The path was still there, of course. It had been there for several hundred years, and it will be there for several hundred more. She climbed to the top of the hill, where the ruins of the ancient Mayan observatory once stood. She dusted off one of the tumbled limestone blocks and sat on it, lotus-fashion and cast her mind into the jungle.

Hours later, as the sun begins to sink, her summons was answered in the form of a man emerging from the jungle.

He wore a jaguar skin draped over one shoulder and an unbleached linen loincloth. Jade earplugs stretched his lobes almost to his shoulders, and his lower lip boasted a similar ornament. Tattoos of Mayan sky serpents and jaguar gods swarmed his naked torso and arms. His hair, going gray at the temples, was pulled up into a warrior’s topknot adorned with the feathers of brightly colored parrots. In one hand, he carried a machete and across his back was slung an AK47.

“Hello, Bill.”

“I do not go by that name anymore,” he replied. “I’m called Chac Balam now. Lord of Jaguars. Why are you here, Sonja? Why did you come back?”

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to try and force your return to my service, if that is what you are thinking. I just wanted to see you one last time, that’s all. I wanted to tell you that everything’s okay. I... I’m not the woman I once was.”

Palmer frowned and squinted at her, looking for things only he might see. He nodded, and some of the tension drained from his face. “You are different. You’re more - I don’t know - together. It’s as if the Other no longer exists.’

“Oh, she’s here all right,” she laughed, thumping her chest. “Just as Denise is still in here. Hard as it might be to believe, the Other actually saved my ass. I guess you could say we have a truce. At least for now. What about you? Are you happy with your new life?”

“I’ve founded a guerrilla group, composed largely of campesinos of Mayan descent. The government hunts us like animals, but they’ve yet to catch us. We keep our supplies and weapons hidden in the sacred cenotes. I guess you could say it’s a back-to- Quetzalcoatl movement.” As he laughed and shook his head, Sonja glimpsed some of the old Palmer she used to know. “I’m a pragmatic man. You know that. But I had a dream, not too long ago, where I saw the world change. It was fierce and frightening, but not hopeless, for the world was being reborn, not destroyed. But all births bring blood and pain, no matter how beautiful the child. All I want is for my people to prepare themselves for that day. Is that really that crazy?”

“No,” she replied. “Just prescient’

Suddenly there was movement in the tree-line behind Palmer. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded, then turned back to Sonja. “I must go. Farewell. Please do not misunderstand me when I say I hope we never meet again.”

As Palmer slipped back between the trees, Sonja glimpsed a figure waiting for him in the shadows. It was the woman, Concha, her belly swollen with life.

It was dark by the time she returned to the empty house. She paused for a second, then re-enter what had once been her home. One last walk through. Just for old times’ sake.

The bedroom she had shared with Palmer reeked of old gym socks and the sheets covering the bed boasted blossoms of mold. In Lethe’s bedroom, mice had chewed their way through the collection of stuffed animals. The kitchen reeked of whatever had been left in the refrigerator months before. The pile of unopened invoices and bills of lading still sat atop the kitchen table, as did the black mask. Sonja picked it up and held it so its impassive features were level with her own. Even after all this time, the surface still shone like a piece of polished onyx.

She decided to go look one last time, at Lethe’s menagerie of rotting plush toys. As she headed down the hall to the bedroom, she saw a pale golden light pouring out from around the door jamb.

Suddenly someone spoke within her head: ‘ Auntie Blue.’

She instantly recognized the voice as Lethe’s, but it was no longer that of a child. Still holding the mask in one hand, she stepped across the threshold, shielding her eyes with an upraised arm against the radiance that stood in the center of the room. Within the heart of the heatless light was a female figure. However, the woman before her was not the teenaged beauty Palmer has described to her, but a crone with a wrinkled face and withered breasts hanging flat against her ribcage, with long, white hair.

“Lethe? Is that you?” Sonja gasped.

Yes, I was Lethe.

“What happened to you?”

I embraced my destiny, just as you have done. We are agents of change, you and me. You are the sickle, I am the seed.

“That still does not explain why you’re…you’re…”

A crone? The old woman gave her a crooked smile. The world has but two constants: creation and destruction. It was such before the rise of Man, before the reign of the great lizards, and even the Unnamed Ones that came before them. Things are born, things prosper, and things die. There is a time for each. My time in this world was destined to be brief. Just as you are a living vampire, I am a living seraph. Neither of us was meant to exist, and yet here we are. We are being used, each in our own way, to reset scales that have long been out of balance.

In the beginning, all humans possessed that which is called ‘sixth sense’. But over the millennia, thanks to the manipulation of the Pretending Ones who prey upon them, they have lost it. The Nobles and other creatures needed humans that were blind and deaf to the Real World, so they could exploit them to their own ends.

But by closing Mankind’s third eye, the Pretending Ones threw the balance of things awry. Mankind metastasized, becoming far more dangerous than the Nobles dreamed. Humanity’s lack of awareness makes them oblivious to the damage they do as they waltz closer and closer to the brink of extinction.

It is fitting that by tampering with a system already out of balance Morgan’s attempt to create a race of living monsters instead produced me. From the moment of my birth, as impossible as it was, I was destined to level the playing field between Pretenders and Mankind.

The universe is both Positive and Negative. If there is too much of one, no matter which it is, then the center can no longer hold. You are the Destroyer, the one who prepares the way. I am the Creatrix—mother to the new flesh. I have mated with twenty-five men, all of whom possess a psychic ability of some sort, and from them I have delivered twenty-five sons who will live a healthy mortal span of years. Each son has either been left as a foundling or in exchange with a loving family for a dying child. Each son was born with psychic abilities, and all twenty-five, once grown to adulthood, will be highly attractive to those of the opposite sex. And, like the Greek gods, their seed will grow in even the rockiest soil.

Should all twenty-five of my sons succeed in reproducing four times each, and their descendants do likewise, within ten generations there will be twenty-six million of them. By the thirteenth, there will be over one billion. By the fifteenth generation, homo sapiens—the thinking man— will be no more—and in his place there will be homo praescius—the aware man. No longer will the Pretending Kind be able to manipulate Mankind by hiding in plain sight. That is my gift to the world.’

“As for you, you now know the truth behind the seraphim. You understand what they truly are, and why the Nobles fear them so. Just as vampires feed on the humans they grew out, so do seraphim feast on vampires, making us the ultimate predators. Just as you evolved from human into vampire, you are gradually becoming one of us.”

“How long do I have before I join the choir?” Sonja asked.

Not long, Lethe replied. A century or two, at best. That is, unless you wish to ascend now, of course. It would be very painful, but it can be done.

“That’s okay, kiddo. I think I’ll tough it out for the time being, if it’s all the same to you. But if your destiny has been fulfilled, why did you come back here?”

My body is deteriorating. Soon I shall be without physical form. Even as she spoke, the glow radiating from Lethe’s body began to dim. I returned here for the same reason you have: this was where I was happiest. I wanted to say goodbye to you both. But Daddy no longer remembers me. I just wanted someone to… read…me… Her voice grew abruptly faint as her radiance began to flicker like a failing neon sign and she sank down onto the corner of the bed.

“To read you a story, before you go to sleep,” Sonja said as she picked up the copy of Good Night Moon that lay at her feet.

Jen yawned and stretched behind the wheel of the Land Rover as Sonja climbed back inside the vehicle.

“About bloody time! I thought you would never get back!”

“I ran into some old friends.”

“Anyone I might know, milady?”

“No. And stop calling me ‘milady’. My name is Sonja.’

Jen pointed to the mask she was holding in her hand. “What’s that?”

Sonja glanced down at the empty eyes staring up at her, the lips parted as if in anticipation. She lifted it to her face. The world she perceived from inside it was limited and claustrophobic. She removed it and hurled it out the window. “It’s just something to hide behind and scare others with,” she replied.

Jen turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. “Where to next?” he asked.

Sonja shrugged and kicked back in the passenger seat, resting her feet on the dash. She reached inside her shirt and withdrew the pendant Morgan had given her, dangling between her fingers like a pendulum. “It’s a big world out there, Jen. Surprise me.”

“As you wish, milady.”

Epilogue

“From fairyland she must have come

Or else she is a mermaiden,’

Some said she was a ghoul, and some

A heathen goddess born again.

—John Davidson, A Ballad of a Nun

Turn the page to continue reading from the Sonja Blue Novels

Chapter One

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

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

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

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

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

But then along came the Present.

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

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

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

Which brings us to Deadtown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mama! Mama!”

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

“Mama!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let him go, assholes!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That hurt.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Eddie?” the boy whispered.

“What is it, kid?”

“Can I have some cookies?”

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

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

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

“Is he your son?” she asked.

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

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

“Yes.”

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

“Indeed she was.”

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

“Who’s Esher?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Has it always been like this?”

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

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

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

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

“Where does the water and power come from?”

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

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

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

“You mean the gangs?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And the boy?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I serve no one but myself.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

How strange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Which ones?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Perfectly,” Decima replied with a smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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 © 2013 by Nancy A. Collins

ISBN 978-1-4976-6175-2

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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