Sunglasses After Dark (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  Since Magruder had a legitimate grievance with Chaz, I chose to let his men off easy with a broken arm apiece. Magruder didn’t take the hint, though, and within twenty- four hours there were two more chunks in cheap suits coming around Chaz’s digs, only this time they were armed.

  I remember nothing of my second confrontation with Thick Eddie’s men beyond one of the squarish men pulling his gun on me. I regained my senses hours later, only to find myself miles from where I last remembered being, soaked in blood and aching from broken bones and internal injuries. My right shoulder throbbed fiercely, meaning I’d taken a bullet. I later discovered one of the hit men ended up in the hospital with a fractured skull, two broken arms and a ruptured spleen. The second was dumped in front of Magruder’s ‘legitimate’ wholesale carpeting business.

  I found Chaz at my flat. He’d fled his own place after Thick Eddie’s armed goons jumped us. We both knew Magruder wasn’t the type who’d take kindly to having his employees murdered. I suggested that Chaz pay Thick Eddie restitution for the cocaine he’d stolen. Chaz wasn’t thrilled with the idea, but finally agreed to do it under the condition that I accompany him.

  Using underworld channels, Chaz sent his proposal to Thick Eddie. Since Magruder refused to meet anyone alone, including his own mother, alone, Chaz grudgingly agreed to the presence of a ‘personal bodyguard’ at the rendezvous point.

  The meeting was held at an old warehouse near the Thames. The place stank of dead fish and less wholesome flotsam. Magruder was already there by the time we arrived. He sat on an old shipping crate, smoking a cigar and reading the evening paper. The headline read BOY TRAPPED IN REFRIGERATOR EATS OWN FOOT. Thick Eddie glanced over the top of the paper at us as we approached.

  “I dinna believe th’ lads a’ first, when they told me ‘twas a lassie. Me lads are brave ‘uns. Not th’ kind t’ run scared an’ tell wild tales, they are.” Magruder fixed his eyes on me. “But then, things t’ain’t always as they seem, eh? Me gran, she were alius sayin’ that.”

  I groaned and shook my head in disgust. Of all the people in the United Kingdom he could choose from, Chaz would have to pick a Pretender crime boss to piss off!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Magruder was part ogre?” I hissed into Chaz’s ear.

  “I swear I didn’t know!” he replied, sounding genuinely alarmed. “I’ve never seen him in person before!” Chaz cleared his throat and stepped forward. “I, uh, got your money right here, sir.” He hoisted a small gym bag as proof. “I trust you’ll, uh, see fit to let bygones be bygones, eh? It was all a bad misunderstanding.”

  Thick Eddie stared at the proffered bag, his heavy-lidded eyes resembling those of a basking lizard. “Yew know I make more’n that every hour, lad. ‘Tain’t th’ money that’s important. Nay, ‘tis th’ principle o’ th’ thing. If I let yew go now, every punk in London’ll be thinkin’ he can pull a fast’un on Eddie Magruder. That’s why I decided t’ call in me personal bodyguard.” The crime boss motioned with his cigar, and a chunk of shadow separated itself from the darkness of the warehouse. “I’d like yew t’ meet me cousin, Jo’die.”

  The ogre towered over his mongrel kinsman by at least two feet, and weighed a good five hundred pounds to Thick Eddie’s three, and was dressed in bag clothes and a cloth cap for camouflage. Despite the differences in their heights and builds, there was a marked family resemblance between the two. The ogre growled something in his native tongue that caused Magruder to lift an eyebrow.

  “It seems Cousin Jo’die finds yer lady friend a wee bit familiar.”

  The ogre pushed the brim of his cap back with a taloned finger the size of a small sausage, his brow furrowed by unaccustomed brainwork. It was then I recognized the Pangloss’s monk.

  “Fuck this!” shrilled Chaz, hurling the bag of money at Magruder and fleeing in the direction of the exit.

  The ogre roared like a lion and bounded after him. It only took three strides of his long, oak-like legs to catch up. Chaz shrieked as the ogre grabbed him by the back of the neck, dangling him above the floor like a puppy.

  “I’d see aboot that, if I were yew, lass,” suggested Thick Eddie as he bent to retrieve the bag Chaz had abandoned. “Jo’die might just be a wee bit peckish right now.”

  I sprinted to Chaz’s rescue, all the while cursing the ogre and the northern climes that produced such changeling bastards as Thick Eddie Magruder.

  Cousin Jordie had reversed his grip and was now holding Chaz by his ankles. Ogres like to eat their prey head first. I don’t know why, they just do.

  I slammed into the ogre just as he began to lift his apelike arms. Cousin Jordie dropped Chaz and swatted me with a hand the size of a telephone directory. As for Chaz, he didn’t waste any time getting to his feet and leaving me alone with Magruder’s kinsman. Seeing his meal making its getaway, the ogre moved to follow.

  “Jordie!” I shouted.

  The ogre’s huge, hairless head swung toward me, momentarily distracted from its prey.

  “Remember me? I was in the villa.”

  I could almost hear the cogs turning in the ogre’s bullet-shaped head as his brows bunched and unbunched in thought. Then comprehension dawned in his orangish- brown eyes, and his lips pulled back to expose a mouthful of inwardly-curved teeth. The ogre roared and came at me, shaking the floor as he charged.

  I leapt to meet him, moving inside the ogre’s apelike reach to drive my knife deep into his side. But while the blade tore through the ogre’s outer garments, it merely slid along the monster’s ribs as if his skin was made of rubber.

  Cousin Jordie bellowed his battle cry, his throat sacs swelling like those of a howler monkey. He then locked me in a simian embrace and began to squeeze. His brutish face was inches from mine as he proceeded to crush my bones to make his bread. Black sunbursts filled my eyesight as Cousin Jordie laughed, exhaling a fetid breath that was like a slaughterhouse on a hot August day.

  I was still clutching my knife, although my arm was pinned to my side. I squirmed frantically in his grip, trying to work my arm free. This seemed to amuse and excite the ogre, and he licked my face with a long, rasp-like tongue. As he did so, I received an explicit mental image of myself being ravaged and devoured, but was uncertain whether to kill me before or after the rape.

  I voiced my disapproval of ogrish courting techniques by wrenching my arm free and driving the switchblade up to its hilt in Cousin Jordie’s right ear. It slid in beautifully, like a key into a lock.

  The ogre yowled and let go of me in favor of clawing at the blade embedded in his brain. I quickly assessed my damage as Cousin Jordie crashed about, flailing his arms and squealing like a frightened sow, and discovered I only had a few broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder. After nearly a minute of crashing about blindly, the ogre finally collapsed face forward onto the floor, his cries halted in mid-squeal, blood pouring from every hole in his head. I retrieved my blade, making sure to give it an extra twist, just in case.

  Luckily, Thick Eddie didn’t have time to send for any more family members after us. For reasons unknown, his car mysteriously exploded a couple days after our rendezvous in the warehouse. The wholesale carpeting business can be very cutthroat at times.

  Chapter Twenty

  1989: I remember the last vampire I killed in London. Chaz was in a gay bar in one of the seedier districts. There were always plenty of vampires to be found in the bars, not to mention vargr and incubi, as those living in the shadows of human society made for the easiest prey. Because of this, prostitutes, junkies, johns, closeted homosexuals and the homeless make up the staple diet of most Pretenders.

  Chaz had picked up a handsome young man dressed in exquisitely pressed chinos with neatly rolled cuffs and a tight-fitting white T-shirt. Chaz led him into an empty building that was under construction. I crouched in the rafters, watching my Judas goat as he lured the sacrificial victim deeper into the trap.

  I jumped from my hiding place, savoring the split second of free-fall bef
ore I crashed down on top of the startled vampire. I pinned him to the floor, straddling his chest. He was a strong one, and as vicious as a rutting tiger. I managed to stick him once, twice. Then I got a good look at his face for the first time. I froze.

  “Kill him! For the love of Christ, kill it!” Chaz shouted.

  But I couldn’t. I was paralyzed by the face I recognized the bastard. The vampire writhed under me, spitting and clawing like a rabid cat. The last time I’d seen him, he was behind the wheel of a Rolls Royce the color of smoke, dressed in the livery of a chauffeur.

  “Where is he? Where is Morgan?” I didn’t recognize the voice as my own. I tasted bile and blood rising in my throat. “I know you belong to him! You were with him that night in the car!”

  The vampire twisted his head from side to side, hissing like a snake. My paralysis disappeared and I smashed my fist into his mouth. I didn’t feel his fangs as they shredded my knuckles. His blood was thick and dark, like dirty motor oil. All I could see was his demonic leer as Denise beat on the glass partition and begged him to stop the limo. I swiped at his handsome features with my switchblade like an artist at an easel, laying his face open to the bone. Morgan’s chauffeur screamed and pushed me off his chest and staggered toward the door that lead out onto the street. Blinded in one eye, the vampire tumbled down the front steps and landed on the sidewalk, his white shirt now the color of old ketchup. He got to his feet, clinging to a nearby streetlight like a music-hall drunk. I rushed out of the building, Chaz on my heels, intent on dragging the thing back inside the empty building and finishing my interrogation, even if it meant peeling off his skin layer by layer.

  Morgan’s chauffeur turned to look at me, and I saw that my knife had sliced away his upper lip and left cheek, exposing the teeth and gums. It looked like he was leering at me again. Maybe that’s what made me lose control. He raised a hand in a feeble attempt to deflect the next blow.

  “No . . .” he gasped.

  Or perhaps he was saying ‘know’. I was beyond caring if he knew where Morgan was at that point. For at that moment I was in the backseat of a Rolls Royce with a chauffeur whose grin was impossibly sharp.

  The switchblade impaled his right eye, burying itself in the spongy softness of the frontal lobes, severing left brain from right. I made sure to twist the knife, for old time’s sake.

  The vampire dropped to the ground and lay sprawled in the gutter under the streetlight. As I stared at the rapidly bloating corpse at my feet, I felt as if I was emerging from heavy sedation. I was vaguely aware of the blanched faces watching me from a dozen windows.

  Chaz tugged on my sleeve. “Snap out of it, Sonja!” he said urgently. “What’s wrong with you? You really bollocked it up this time!”

  We fled that blessed plot the very next day, more out of fear of Scotland Yard than anything else. Once again, I was on the run and still no closer to finding Morgan.

  A Year Ago: After decades of wandering the cities of the word, I finally return to the land of Denise Thorne’s birth. The last time I was in America I had been a pampered rich kid with her whole life laid out for her like a party frock draped across the foot of her bed. Now I wasn’t even me anymore.

  Socialite, hooker, vampire hunter and vampire—no one could accuse me of leading a dull life.

  Chaz decided to join me at the last minute. I told him he was free to return to England and pick up the life he had before we met. He insisted on accompanying me. It turned out to be a huge mistake, as the skuzziest down-and-out dive on Skid Row proved too wholesome for him. All he did was bitch about how much he missed the clubs in Soho and how you could scrape away America’s history with a thumbnail. Still, he did prove useful to me, as he was the one who brought Catherine Wheele to my attention…

  That’s funny. I’m having trouble visualizing Chaz. The face is there, but it’s blurred, like an old movie that’s jumped its sprockets. Everything is jumping and rolling like the picture on a cheap TV set. The weird part is that it seems so familiar . . . like it’s supposed to do that when I think about Catherine Wheele… e.

  We control the horizontal. We control the vertical.

  Like fuck you do! What’s going on here? Damn it, if this is your doing...

  Why should I want to keep you from continuing your boring little autobiography? The Other snarled. I’ve only heard it every sleep for the past six months. ‘Poor pitiful me, I’ve become a big bad monster.’ Give me a break! No, as much as I’d love to change channels, I’m not the one behind your technical difficulties. You gotta dig deeper to find the source for that.

  Deeper?

  Just tell your fucking story. You’ll find out.

  Like I said, it was Chaz who showed me the article in a cheesy supermarket tabloid. ‘Sister’ Catherine, as she called herself, was dressed in a red-white-and-blue spangled jumpsuit, holding a microphone as her makeup leaked down her face. A smaller photo was cropped and inserted into the lower right-hand corner, showing Shirley Thorne, wife of industrialist Jacob Thorne and mother of missing heiress Denise Thorne. The headline claimed Mrs. Thorne was funneling a small fortune into the Wheeles of God Ministry in an attempt to locate her long- lost daughter.

  I sent Chaz to scout out Wheele, to see if there was any truth to the rumors behind her being a wild talent. He was gone a long time...He…He… It’s getting hard to think.

  Just tell the story.

  He was supposed to meet me at the playground after midnight. He was waiting for me by the basketball goal when I arrived. I walked up behind him. He turned. He was smiling. As usual. Before I could question him about Wheele, he kissed me. Didn’t say a word— just kissed me. And fired a gun point-blank into my gut.

  That’s it. I know it’s hard to think, but just keeping telling the story…

  I fell down...I saw him run away…he didn’t even look back. Smart boy. He knew better than to hang around…I looked down at my stomach and saw a tranquilizer dart.

  Suddenly there were hands all over me...The little shit set me up...But he didn’t tell them the truth about me…At least not the whole truth… As the tranquilizer swept over me, I felt The Other rise to the surface, like a shark going after a surfer. Men screaming…. blood on me and in me… someone chanting “Antichrist” like a mantra. And then ... then ... nothing but static…

  What a wimp! You’re real good at slam-dunking bad-ass bikers into trash cans, but come the first aversion barrier and you’re whining like a goddamn baby!

  What are you saying?

  I’m saying you’ve run the same damn monologue every sleep cycle for the past six months and you never get past the barrier. Never. I’ve let you slide before now because, well, because it suited me to do so. But it’s time for you to finish the story, Sonja.

  No. I can’t. The white noise hurts when I try to go any farther.

  You have to push past it and get to other side. .

  No. You’re lying. There’s nothing there. You can’t fool me into looking.

  Suddenly white-hot static fills my head and I try to yell and tell it to stop, but the noiseless noise fills my mouth and nostrils. I’m drowning in emptiness. Something clicks inside my skull. It’s like a searchlight has been trained on my brain. Something’s in there; something powerful and mean. Fingers of laser light probe the contours of my frontal lobes. I can’t move. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. The intruder isn’t a nimble sneak thief like Chaz, but a vandal intent on ransacking everything, unmindful of the damage. My memory is ruptured and the past spills out, filling my head with a thousand simultaneous emotions. Synapses burn, fuses blow. The creature in my head worries at the capstone separating my mind from that of the Other’s, tugging at it like pliers on a bad tooth.

  Then all hell breaks loose.

  I can’t! I can’t! Don’t make me, please, don’t make me.

  Don’t make you what?

  Don’t make me look. Can’t make me. She won’t let you make me.

  Who won’t let you look?
<
br />   She won’t!

  What are you so scared of, Sonja? What could possibly frighten you so badly you’d rather go mad than look at it?

  Shut up! I won’t look! I refuse to listen to your lies!

  Who erected the barrier, Sonja? It wasn’t Wheel, was it? That bitch might be an expert at knocking down walls, but she doesn’t know how to raise one. No, you know who built the barrier. Say her name.

  It can’t be her. She’s dead.

  Then why won’t you look?

  You’re a liar. Shut up, liar.

  Finish the story, Sonja. What is she afraid of?

  You.

  Me?

  She’s afraid you’re not what Ghilardi said you were. She’s afraid you’re not a demon from hell. That there is no Other, no Sonja Blue. She’s afraid there’s only her.

  Now, was that so bad? The last time you went nuts rather than consider that possibility. And look where it got you. You provided Wheele with a loaded pistol and invited her to fire it point- blank at your head!

  Is it true?

  Hmmmm?

  Is it true that you and I aren’t real? That we’re just different parts of her?

  You got me. Even if I did know, would you believe me if I told you?

  If it is true, then I don’t exist, and neither do you. Doesn’t that bother you?

  But we’re still here, aren’t we?

  Yes, but...

  Time to wake up.

  Claude bent over the motionless body on the futon. He’d found her earlier that afternoon, fully dressed, right down to her ubiquitous sunglasses. At first she didn’t seem to be breathing, but he was able to find, after some searching, an abnormally slow pulse. He was uncertain is she was asleep or languishing in a coma.

  He’d spent the most of the day crouched beside the pallet, watching her for signs of life. He dosed off once or twice, only to be awakened by vivid images of a man being beaten to death with a cane and a moldering, sharp-toothed thing wearing tinted glasses. He tried reading an old leather- bound book he found nearby to pass the time, but the text was indecipherable and half the pages were covered with baroque geometric patterns. As the only other book in the loft was a slender volume written in German, Claude ended up leafing through The Vanishing Heiress staring at the photos of Denise Thorne.