"Which one you mean? The old lady?"
"No. The blonde pushing the wheelchair," the woman in the leather jacket said, tapping the picture.
The bartender shook his head and tossed the photograph back onto the counter. "Naw. Can't say I recognize her. Sorry."
"How about this one?" She flipped a second photo out of a small deck held in a fan like playing cards.
The other photograph was in better focus, although taken under the same conditions. It was of a sexy brunette in a red cocktail dress being helped into a sports car by a slightly balding middle-aged man in evening clothes. The bartender's eyes narrowed.
"Now this one looks familiar. She wears her hair different, but I'm pretty sure it's her. She comes in from time to time. Checks out the bar. Working girl, from what I've seen of her."
"She ever talk to you?"
The bartender shook his head. "Just to order drinks. Virgin Marys. Keeps to herself, unless she hooks a John."
"When's the last time you saw her?"
"Couple of weeks ago, I guess. She left with some suit." He tilted his head to one side. "Are you a cop, lady?"
"Do I look like a cop?"
"Hell, no!" the bartender snorted. "The reason I asked, see ... that suit she walked out of here with turned up missing a couple of days later."
"You don't say?"
"Cops were all over this place, asking questions. I guess he was some kind of business bigwig," he said, turning to slide one of the long stems into its overhead rack. "The cops seemed to think the bastard high-tailed it to Rio with company funds. The way I see it-" The bartender turned back to face his questioner, only to find himself addressing empty space. He shrugged and resumed polishing his highball glass. Fucking tourists.
Sonja strode purposefully across the Hotel Orso's lobby, oblivious to the stares from the staff and guests. She had more important things on her mind. The blood witch was in the area.
There was no doubt the Contessa's renfield was out and about, doing her mistress's work.
She had spent the better part of two years tracking down the old bitch. She had come close to killing her back in Vienna, only to have her escape. Now it was up to her to track down the Contessa and finish her off, much like a master hunter would a wounded deer.
Vampires as ancient as the Contessa were never easy prey. You didn't get to be hundreds of years old without honing to a fine art the ability to go to ground. If one identity got too hot for them, they would switch to another as easily as they would change their socks. This made her quarry especially difficult to keep track of. However, since ancients rarely had to worry about being recognized from one generation to another, they tended to use the same identities over and over again. Another thing in her favor was the inherent difficulty ancients seemed to have in understanding the importance of technology, which to her meant commissioning a computer database, based on her own design, that could access and cross-reference real estate records, land titles, newspaper reports, census information, birth and death certificates, and maps, scanning them for known identities and pseudonyms of the so-called Ruling Class. As an afterthought, she had an anagram generator incorporated into the system, just in case someone decided to get cute.
A search on the Contessa pulled up newspaper reports dating from the Depression of a notorious "high-class house of ill repute" called Red Velvet Manor. Its madam was one Eliza Bayroth, who was rumored to have catered to the more outr6 tastes of captains of industry, Supreme Court justices, and the occasional President. After the start of World War n, rumors began to circulate of occult rituals, which may or may not have been a cover for Fifth Columnist activities.
The brothel shut down shortly after a newspaperman famous for underworld reportage announced his intention of publishing an expos6 of Red Velvet Manor. The reporter disappeared off the face of the Earth not long after that. A year later, a badly decomposed body, believed to be that of the missing journalist, was found in a nearby landfill. It was assumed to be a gangland killing. By the time the body was uncovered, Madame Bayroth had married a dissolute Romanian nobleman and set sail for the Continent, where, from there on in, she was known simply as the Contessa.
This information dovetailed into what she herself had uncovered from her European sources and from microfiched issues of Le Figaro, Paris-Match, and Der Spiegel. Studied in its totality, the data answered several nagging questions Sonja had concerning her quarry.
She had been hunting vampires for almost thirty years. Her knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, their abilities and limits, did not come from reading books or watching movies, but from hands-on experience. But, for all her familiarity with the world and ways of the Undead, she had been baffled by the Contessa. For one, she did not seem to possess the telltale fangs, nor did she surround herself with lesser vampires of her own Making. And, most important, she had survived an attack with a silver weapon, albeit as a double amputee.
Sonja realized now that she had made a grave mistake in classifying the Contessa as a garden-variety vampire. From what she had since learned from various sources and her own research, the Contessa was not a true vampire, but a strega- those who transform themselves into Undead through the use of black magic. Such creatures were rare, but those that existed were crafty and possessed different strengths and weaknesses than "typical" vampires. While the Contessa's means of feeding on her victims did not spread the taint, that didn't make her any less dangerous. Like all vampires, she was a corrupting force on any human who fell into her sphere of influence. To allow such a monster to continue to exist was anathema to Sonja.
After all, it was one such monster that had attacked Sonja, over thirty years ago... and made her one of them.
Phaedra was wearing the short red wig and the black silk sheath that night. It hadn't taken her very long to reel in the next John whose name wasn't John. As they headed for the Boxter, he began to drag his heels. She turned to look at him.
"Is there something wrong, sugar?"
"Look, lady ..." he said, his face coloring. "I thought I could go through with this."
"What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely baffled.
"It's not you!" he said with a nervous laugh. "God knows, you're one of the most beautiful women I've ever met! It's just that-well, I keep thinking of my wife and the kids. And, well, I'm sure you're a great person and all that... but I just can't go through with this. I'm sorry if I led you on back at the bar."
Phaedra blinked and shifted around uncomfortably, uncertain of what she should do. She had never had a John throw the hook before. The one or two who had gotten away in the past had done so simply because someone who would have been able to give a description to the local authorities or remember a license plate number had walked up at an inopportune moment. But nothing like actual rejection had ever happened to her before. It had never once crossed her mind that a man might be capable of passing up sex. In her experience, given the chance, men fucked anything that was willing, and much that was not.
"I feel like I haven't been honest with you or myself. My name isn't John, it's Frank. Frank Hensley," he said, an abashed look on his face. "Believe me, I would love to spend the night with you-"
"Get in the car," she said.
"Beg pardon?" Frank blinked, uncertain he'd heard her correctly.
"Get in the car, damn you!"
Frank's eyes widened at the sight of the gun aimed at his midsection. "Whoa, lady!" he said, automatically raising his hands. "Don't you think you're overreacting?"
Bartenders, like cops, develop a sixth sense for trouble. And the chick in the leather jacket was definitely that. Over the years he learned never to trust anyone who wore sunglasses after the sun went down, since it usually meant they were strung out on something. Still, potential trouble or not, it was his job to serve her, just as he would any other customer who happened to stroll into the Embers Lounge.
"What'll it be, ma'am?"
"I don't want a drink, just information. Have you
seen this woman?" she asked, pushing a snapshot wrapped in a twenty towards him.
"What's the deal?" he said, eyeing her suspiciously. "She owe you money or something?"
The woman in the sunglasses smiled crookedly without showing her teeth. "Far from it. In fact, I'm the one who owes her. I'm just trying to track her down so I can pay her back."
The bartender hesitated for a moment, but the twenty was too tempting to ignore. He picked up the photo and frowned at it for a moment.
"Yeah, I recognize her."
The stranger in the leather jacket and mirrored shades grew attentive. "When was the last time you saw her?"
"Just a few minutes ago." He nodded in the direction of the side door. "She just left with some suit."
To his surprise, the stranger bared her teeth in a snarl and headed in the direction he'd indicated as if the joint had suddenly caught fire. The bartender wasn't certain, but he could have sworn he'd glimpsed fangs. He shook his head, doing his best to forget what he had just seen as he pocketed the twenty. Yeah, she was trouble all right. But not his, thank God.
"Shut up and get in the car!" Phaedra said, jerking open the passenger door.
Frank stared at the gun, then at Phaedra. What he saw in her eyes was enough to turn him on his heel and send him sprinting back in the direction of the motel. He managed to get halfway across the parking lot before she dropped him with a single shot to the right leg. Frank lay on the asphalt, writhing in pain as he clutched what remained of his kneecap.
Phaedra hurried to claim her prize, removing the handcuffs sfie kept hidden in her purse as she crossed the lot with brisk, purposeful strides. Frank cringed in fear, lifting his bloodied hands to shield his face, as she loomed over him.
'Take my wallet, if that's what you want! I don't care! Just don't kill me! Please! I've got a wife and kids!"
Phaedra cursed under her breath and quickly scanned the parking lot for witnesses. The bastard was making too much noise. She would be better off popping him here and now and fleeing the scene, then starting from scratch in one of the gentlemen's clubs across town. Phaedra returned the handcuffs to her purse and raised the gun. Frank began to alternately pray and sob out loud.
Before Phaedra could squeeze the trigger, the side door of the bar banged open, causing her to swing the gun in the direction of the noise. She saw a strange woman standing framed in the doorway, dressed in a black leather motorcycle jacket and wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, even though it was the dead of night.
The stranger did not seem surprised by the sight of a man wallowing on the asphalt, nor was she frightened by the gun pointed in her direction. Instead of turning and running back into the building, the stranger let the door close behind her and gave her right wrist a small, sharp snap and a silver blade in the shape of a frozen flame sprouted from her hand as if by magic. Phaedra gasped in recognition, even though she had never seen the woman before.
The Blue Monster fixed Phaedra with its horrible mirrored eyes and moved towards her with determined, measured steps, its hideous silver fang reflecting the glow from the streetlights.
Phaedra squeezed the trigger of the gun, firing on her approaching enemy. The Blue Monster moved with the fluid grace of underwater ballet, twisting its upper torso one-quarter turn to allow the bullet to pass by. The second bullet, however, caught it in the upper shoulder, knocking it to the ground.
Phaedra looked down at Frank, still cowering at her feet, then at the Blue Monster, which was already painfully picking itself up off the ground, and, with a scream of angry frustration, fled to the waiting Boxter, leaving six feet of smoking rubber in her wake.
Sonja sat up and grimaced at the pain radiating from her shoulder. She bit her lower lip, her fangs inadvertently drawing more blood. It felt like the renfield had broken her damn collarbone. Then again, she'd taken slugs to the heart and lungs without much to show for it except some scars. She grunted as she got to her feet, pushing the throbbing in her shoulder to the back of her mind.
She walked over to where the renfield's intended victim lay huddled on the asphalt He was alive, although his face was starting to go gray from shock. He flinched as she leaned over him.
"Don't shoot me," he whispered.
"I'm not her."
The side door opened, and the bartender stuck his head outside. "What the fuck's going on out here?"
'This man's been shot! Call 911!" she shouted in reply.
The bartender nodded and disappeared back inside the Embers.
Frank shook his head, a look of baffled pain on his face. "Why'd she shoot me?"
"You must have broken the script. You did something she was unprepared for."
Frank laughed without humor. "All I said was that I didn't want to go home with her." His laughter turned into a moan, causing him to close his eyes. When he opened them again, the woman with the mirrored sunglasses was gone. Which suited him just fine. There was something about the way she stared at the blood from his wound that scared him even more than being shot again.
The sound of the front door slamming shut reverberated throughout the house. Startled, the Contessa looked around at the red velvet wallpaper and the gilded rococo statuary that surrounded her on all sides, a look of bafflement on her face. This wasn't Vienna. And she was reasonably sure it wasn't Budapest. But if she was in neither of these places, then where was she? And, more important, when was she?
Her confused gaze fell to her lap, and she caught sight of the grotesque contraptions that served as her legs. Ah, yes. The New World. The city that sprawled along the shores of the great inland freshwater sea. She stared at a heavily brocaded mahogany love seat and saw a long-dead Chief Justice being fellaled by a twelve-year-old boy. She shook her head, dislodging the ghost memory. It was so easy to forget where and when she was these days.
If it wasn't for Magda ... no, her name was Gretchen. Wait, that wasn't right, either. Phaedra? Yes. That was it. If it weren't for her faithful companion, Phaedra, she would become lost within the world inside herself, wandering the shadow-haunted palaces and ballrooms of centuries past.
"Contessa!"
Phaedra burst into the parlor, her mascara smeared and hair in disarray. That more than the look of fear on her companion's face shocked the Contessa back into her senses.
"What is it, child? You look a fright."
Phaedra grabbed the handles of the old woman's wheelchair and began quickly pushing her towards the converted dumbwaiter. "We have to leave! We have to leave right now/"
"Phaedra, what's going on?" The Contessa twisted around in her seat so she could face her companion. "Answer me, young lady!"
Phaedra fumbled with the door to the elevator, her eyes blinded by tears. "I'm so sorry, mistress. I'm so, so sorry."
"Sorry? For what?'
Phaedra's shoulders shook as she began to sob. "I've failed you, mistress. Please forgive me."
"Speak plainly, Phaedra! You're starting to annoy me!"
"The Blue Monster is here."
The Contessa gasped involuntarily as phantom pain shot through the stumps of her legs. She put a trembling hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with fear.
"Are you certain it's her?"
"As sure as sunlight burns," Phaedra replied. "Please, Contessa, we've got to leave right now! Take the elevator to the ground floor and wait for me by the boathouse. I'll go upstairs and get the strongbox and passports, then I'll bring the car around. I'll have to put you in the trunk-just in case sunrise catches us before I can reach a safe haven."
"But I don't want to ride in the trunk," the Contessa said petulantly.
"Please, mistress, not now! Just do as I ask!" Phaedra pushed the wheelchair into the elevator and pulled the doors shut behind it. "I'll be down to get you in a couple of minutes. I promise."
The Contessa sat in the darkened elevator, staring at the control panel for a long moment, before punching the button.
Phaedra grabbed the top drawer of the bedroom dresser and
yanked it out, sending crotchless panties and Wonder Bras flying in every direction. She flipped the drawer over, revealing the manila envelope taped to its bottom. Inside the envelope were numerous identity papers, passports, and documents made out in the various names the Contessa had used over the years. Exactly which pseudonym they would be using to flee the country would be decided later.
Phaedra stuffed the envelope inside a leather satchel, then hurried over to the red leather ottoman and removed its padded lid. Inside the hollowed out footrest was a metal strongbox containing two hundred thousand dollars in bundled currency, a number of credit cards, seven gold Rolex watches, and various pieces of male jewelry they had yet to convert into ready cash. Still, it was enough to take them somewhere far away. The French Riviera, perhaps, maybe the Golden Triangle. Anywhere but here.
As she lifted the strongbox from its hiding place, she was surprised to hear the sound of the Contessa's private elevator coming to a stop. She turned and saw the Contessa wheeling herself out of the converted dumbwaiter.
Cursing under her breath, she put aside what she was doing and strode forward, trying her best to keep the panic from showing in her face. "Why aren't you downstairs?"
"I can't leave," the Contessa replied, shaking her head.
Phaedra knelt so she could look her mistress in the face, placing a soft, young hand on the Contessa's withered shoulder. "Why can't you leave?"
"Because it's time for my bath," the Contessa said matter-of-factly, her gnarled hand closing on Phaedra's throat, its grip as tight and inescapable as death's.
There was no mistaking Red Velvet Manor for anything else, even from a distance. The red curtains, lit from behind, caused the windows to glow like the eyes of an animal.
Sonja cut the headlights as she came up the long, winding drive approaching the house. She could see the Boxter in which the renfield had made her escape earlier by the side of the house, the driver's-side door still hanging open. She pulled up behind the sports car, blocking its path. She twitched her right arm, cupping her hand so it caught the switchblade as it dropped from its hidden sheath within the sleeve.
Nancy A Collins Page 4
