Divine Madness

by Melanie Jackson

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As I mentioned before, time had become meaningless; it belonged to another world. I did send off my deathly-sick-in-a-one-phone-village message to my boss before we left the next morning, asking for an extension of my leave, for all the good it would do. It might buy a little time, but I had every expectation of someday reaching my house—assuming I even got back, which was a large assumption—and discovering that it had been cleaned out, basement to attic, by one of the many three-letter agencies who were concerned with the comings and goings of certain kinds of scientists. This violation of my privacy probably should have bothered me, but it all seemed to belong to a life that was over. Anyway, Saint Germain had taught me what real violation of privacy was. The rest was nothing when compared to that.

  If my old life was gone, then departed too was the terminal loneliness that went with it, the awful backdrop for my life that had become a depressing wallpaper of the mind resisting all my previous efforts to strip or paint over it. Ninon had burned it away.

  True, I was leaving the comfort of the known, and a lucrative and prestigious career, to chase a homicidal maniac who wanted his ghouls to eat me, but the trade was worthwhile. I still find it somewhat amazing how I walked away—first physically and then mentally—and left it all behind without even a twinge of regret. That’s what rage and determination—and lust—will do for you. Like a snake, I just shed that constricting skin and moved on.

  I also started keeping a journal, the notes that have turned into this story. Perhaps it is different for you, but I find that writing puts me in control, that it allows me to blunt the edges of cold hard truth, dressing them in optimistic padding that sometimes—sometimes—helps me look at hard things without getting cut and bruised. This works for me because the mind is strong, and belief can indeed move mountains. It often lets me believe that all will be well even when statistics say otherwise.

  As we drove out along the road—a horrible stretch of cracked paving and then dirt that I suppose could have been worse, but only with a direct act of divine intervention—I found myself thinking about a conversation I’d had with Ninon some time before. A day ago? Two days perhaps? I had lost track. We had been speaking about Saint Germain. I had expressed curiosity about him and wondered if he had been the victim of the standard abuses we hear so many sociopaths were subject to.

  Her reply had been adamant. “You must not think of him this way—as a person, a victim. He has renounced all claims to humanity. Do you think that in the past I’ve never had moments of compassion for him?” she asked. “Times when I pitied the creature for the horrible childhood he must have had? Of course I have. But, Miguel, the thing with someone who has formally embraced evil is that no amount of kindness can wipe out what was done to him. It’s too late for love or therapy. The bridges are burned. This is a case where no sufficient reparation to him or from him can be made. The broken cannot be mended, not by us. Maybe by God. Maybe.” She paused. “Understand this: He doesn’t want to change. He’s not looking for a way out of this situation, a chance to redeem himself. He likes the power and wants more. Maybe it’s because Daddy didn’t love him, perhaps it’s his growing insanity, I don’t know. All I can say is that he will kill us—and many others—if he is not stopped.”

  I had changed—aged, grown harder. Seeing those zombies—and, yes, his using my father’s image as a way to trick me into letting him get near Ninon—had colored in the remaining gray areas for me. Ninon was right. Saint Germain, for whatever cause, was evil. And evil, true evil, cannot be seen as anything but black in a white world. You have to be absolute in your thinking because evil is absolute; it will show no compassion or mercy. It is not human and that is not its nature. To think of evil in any other way is to invite its invasion through chinks in your armor.

  I was also wondering a lot about Fate these days, what Ninon might see as God’s will. Perhaps I just suffered from really bad luck. Actually, I knew I suffered from bad luck. The only question was whether it was random, a statistical fluke. Why had I come back to Mexico? Was it really for help? Trying to find some long-lost cure for my disease carved into ancient stones? Or was it that I could feel myself giving in to S.M.’s power and wanted to be near someone—anyone, even my brain-impaired mother—who understood what was happening? Or was it—maybe—a higher purpose that brought me? Had I been selected as a tool? A comforting thought, but was I rationalizing because I was squeamish about what needed to be done?

  Have you ever noticed that self-appraisal can turn into paralyzing second-guessing? I decided to quit before I got to the part where I was asking God about the meaning of my life. Some questions and doubts were just too big when you were on a zombie hunt. You can’t afford those kinds of distractions when you are facing the worst moments of your existence.

  I wished, not for the first time, that I had a dog. I’d wanted a pet for a long time but had known it was impossible. I’d gone to an animal shelter once and caused a panic. The dogs had been terrified of me. Maybe now that the change of electrocution had blunted the worst of the blood-hunger, I could get a pet and have it not be afraid of me.

  Ninon’s Jeep picked up a rock and flung it at my windshield, breaking my reverie. I peered out the side window. The sky said it was noon and so did my bladder.

  I pulled up alongside Ninon as soon the goat path we were on widened enough to do so without losing paint to the nasty flora and knifelike stones that lined the path, and I shouted, “Ready to eat?” It was hard to see her. We were kicking up a dust trail worthy of a cattle stampede. She nodded reluctantly. Now that she had decided on a path, she resented the time we had to give to food or even rest, but she also knew we needed both since neither long life nor vampirism conferred cast-iron kidneys.

  “I know a place. Turn up here,” she shouted back. She jerked her head to indicate that we should take the left fork that we were rolling up on at about thirty-five miles per hour. The slow paced bothered her too, but any faster and we’d have needed to find a dentist to fix our loosened teeth. Thank heaven for seatbelts. We would have been concussed without them. The road wasn’t so much potholed as chasmed.

  I was about to fall back behind Ninon—the dirt road wasn’t really wide enough to accommodate both vehicles—when I saw Ninon’s eyes widen as she leaned forward over her steering wheel. My own gaze jerked forward and there it caught on something unexplainable. In front of us stood, or rather crouched, a satyr. I say satyr because he—it—had the face and torso of a man, but its legs were all goat—backward joints and all. Except it was a hairless goat and seemed to lack genitals, almost as though someone had sewn a badly cured hide over a goat’s legs. Nudity in this situation was shocking enough, but there was another anomaly. This…this thing had what looked a great deal like a bloodied human arm dangling from its mouth.

  It was the worst thing I’d ever seen.

  You know, I may have to stop using the word “worst.” Every time I think I’ve seen the worst, something else happens to prove me wrong. I used to think that the creepiest thing you could do to a corpse was embalm it. Then I ran into Mamita. Then I saw zombies. I’d thought they could never be topped. But I was wrong; this thing increased that magnitude of wrongness tenfold.

  Looking at this nightmare creature, I had one of those moments of shock that can’t last more than a second but that feels like an eternity. As my foot moved toward my brake, Ninon punched her accelerator and aimed her Jeep right at the creature, planning on mowing it down. I admit—this shocked me. It was so repellent that I didn’t even want to touch it with my SUV.

  I quickly lost sight of it in the churned-up dust that boiled under my skidding tires and Ninon’s acceleration, but not before I saw it grin a challenge and toss the remains of its dinner at Ninon’s windshield.

  Ninon applied the brakes. Fortunately I saw the red lights and was able to swerve past as her Jeep did a oneeighty. She was barely stopped before she erupted from her vehicle with gun drawn, saying someth
ing in French that I have never found in a phrase book. I couldn’t help but notice that, surrounded as we were by the triangular stones, she looked like she was standing in a giant shark’s mouth, shouting imprecations at the sky as the huge fish swallowed her in one dusty gulp.

  She let off a shot, but only one because it was immediately apparent that ricochets off the surrounding rocks could be dangerous to us and the vehicles. Anyway, the creature was gone, vanished into a stand of cactus and then down one of the many tunnels created by the piles of cracked boulders dumped there by some glacier many eons ago.

  I had a bad moment when I thought Ninon might be crazy enough to accept the challenge and chase it into the labyrinth, but even enraged, she was too canny to get lured into what was probably a trap.

  Corazon apparently had some doubts too, because he flew out of the window and planted himself in front of her, his back arched and his hair standing out all over his body in a way that was almost comical. Almost. I knew now that this stance meant Saint Germain—in some form—was somewhere nearby.

  I ran up to Ninon, telling myself to keep breathing, that this atavistic fear could be ignored. This new creature was nothing worse. Okay, the last zombies hadn’t been eating anything when we saw them, but dead was dead, and zombies weren’t so bad as foes went. Sure, this thing had suffered from a hideous birth defect, but however warped, it was still just a body without a soul or much in the way of brains—a ghost. Zombies had physical presence but were haunts just the same; human once but no more. And statistically, it was a lot more likely that I would be hit by a bus or struck by lightning—well, that last was a given—than end up eaten by anything, let alone a zombie. They weren’t fast enough to catch us, and they weren’t that bright. The ones we had seen back in that ghost town were obviously more than a few French fries short of a Happy Meal. Maybe this creature had appeared to be deliberately flinging down a bloodied gauntlet, but that was just a trick of the light aided by paranoia. There was no need for me to feel so cold and revolted. I was a big bad vampire, damn it! I didn’t have to be afraid of anything on two legs, no matter how weird those legs were.

  “Not a zombie. A zombie wouldn’t be out feeding at noon,” Ninon corrected, as though hearing my thoughts. She walked over to where the arm had fallen and picked it up. She sniffed delicately. My eyes locked on the thick gold wedding band still encircling the ring finger of the bloodied hand that hung limply. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this was a man’s arm torn off at the shoulder. It also hadn’t been torn off for long, because there was little smell of decay and no rigor mortis.

  “Not a zombie?” I repeated. I had heard her the first time; I just didn’t like the news and was appealing the verdict.

  She dropped the arm at the base of some spiny plant and rubbed her fingers on her jeans. I saw her point—who’d want to go on touching the thing if they didn’t have to? And we really couldn’t keep it. We didn’t even have an ice chest to store it in. Besides, I couldn’t see us strolling into some police station and trying to report this to the local authorities. She had her priorities straight. Still, the coldness, the ruthless dismal of the act made me shiver. As I have mentioned before, Ninon can be scary.

  “No. It’s a ghoul, a genuine Frankensteinian monster. Those are worse. Real bad. A zombie will try to kill you if it’s ordered to, but ghouls kill just because they like to eat people. They’re also fast and very strong and can endure daylight if they must. Some of them are fairly bright. They can think for themselves. They have initiative.”

  “And you are saying that was a ghoul.” I know, I know! I sounded like an idiot, but I just couldn’t take it all in. At least I didn’t ask her to explain the thing I was really wondering about—like, how the hell something like that was created. A Frankenstein monster? Was that possible, sewing together human and nonhuman parts? But such questions had to wait. She had covered the points that were relevant. They were fast, strong, smart, and liked to eat people. The remedial course in Monsters 101 could wait.

  “At least one. Usually they travel in pairs or even packs. Damn it! Saint Germain’s working too quickly, or else he’s been down here for longer than I suspected. How the hell will we ever get a jump on him?” For the first time I heard frustration in her voice. She turned back to the Jeep.

  I had no answer for her, just growing determination to rid the world of this sick bastard. Any trace of compassion for him was long gone. His blackness got blacker and blacker.

  “We need more guns and more ammunition.” She opened the door for Corazon. Crimson flags of rage were flying in her pale cheeks. She hadn’t had time to reapply the self-tanner or dye her hair.

  “Do you think that man was alive? When it took his arm? Should we look for him?” I asked, unable to help myself. It was a stupid question. The dead don’t bleed—not that much—and the arm was covered in clotted blood. That guy was a goner.

  “No, he was dead.” Ninon looked me in the eyes as she said this, but I knew she was lying to spare me.

  “It’s going to be a real pleasure to kill this son-of-a-bitch,” I said, and I meant it. And I wasn’t speaking of the ghoul, though I wanted that abomination dead too. The very thought of it sharing the earth and air with humankind offended me.

  Again, Ninon understood. In a way, it was reassuring that we both still identified ourselves with the human race.

  “Yes. Sadly, yes.” Ninon walked back to her Jeep. “I keep telling myself that we have no choice. I hope that will make it better when the time comes. He’s the last, you know. The only one who knows how to raise the dead, to make these ghouls and zombies. If we kill him before he finds an apprentice, it’s over—for good or bad.”

  “Thank you, God, for each small blessing,” I muttered. As a scientist, I should have wanted to preserve this information. As a human—even only a nominal one—I could only wish it gone.

  “Truthfully, I never thought the day would pass when I would rejoice so completely in another’s death. That I can kill now without regret brings me no happiness.”

  She meant that she feared we were turning into monsters ourselves. I felt bad that I could offer no comfort, but what could I say? I already knew that I was half fiend. My brain—my emotions—were simply slow to catch up with the reality of my changed body and circumstances.

  “Well, looking on the bright side…,” I began.

  “Yes?” She slammed her door and examined a dent her ricocheting bullet had put in it.

  “This makes me feel better about the vampirism. It seems positively natural by comparison.”

  Ninon nodded, clearly distracted by other thoughts.

  “Never mind food. Miguel, we need guns. I know this other place. It’s kind of drug-dealer hangout, a clearing house for marijuana and cocaine. I would have avoided it if I could, but they have the kind of things we need there. They might even have grenades.”

  Grenades. Of course.

  “Also—and I am sorry for this—I think we may have to steal some things,” she went on.

  “Sure,” I said. Then: “Why steal?”

  “It wouldn’t be wise to let these people know we have money. We already have enough things trying to kill us. No need to add drug dealers to the lists.”

  “Excellent point.” And why balk at a little thing like robbery after all the rest?

  We climbed back into our vehicles and headed for Ninon’s den of thieves, where I would begin my career as a bandit. It was nothing compared to what I’d already done, and I wasn’t feeling particularly enthused.

  I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.

  —Voltaire

  The human heart, which will be the subject of these letters, presents so many contrasts that whosoever lays it bare must fall into a flood of contradictions. You think something stable in your grasp and then find that you have seized a shadow…I confess that I am not free from grave scruples since I can scarcely be sincere without slan
dering my own sex a little.…We will undertake a journey of morals together.

  —Letter from Ninon de Lenclos to the Marquis de Sévigné

  He was a man beyond definition; with a soul of pulp, a body of wet paper, and a heart of pumpkin fricasseed in snow.

  —Letter from Ninon de Lenclos about the Marquis de Sévigné

  It is easier to know men in general, than men in particular.

  —François de la Rochefoucauld

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  We stopped just outside La Boca del Conchinillo. The Mouth of the Suckling Pig—how appropriate. We could see the town rising before us, the buildings seeming to do a slow shimmy, caught in the waves of heat emanating off the desert floor. Once again this was another slice of Hell, only this one came with barred windows and barbed wire on the tops of the buildings. It looked a lot like a prison.

  Ninon emerged from her Jeep wearing the dress she’d had on the first night I tried to seduce her. The dress was vintage—a work by Alfred Shaheen, she told me later—with a winged bust that would have looked a bit like the back end of a ’56 Chevy Bel Aire had Chevrolet made any cars in two-tone neon.

  Her hair was loose and she wore red lipstick. She looked like a ’50s Hollywood vamp, the kind who always hung out with gangsters. She batted her eyes at me and had me convinced that she was a brainless bimbo, that if she’d ever managed to have a thought it had gone and died of loneliness waiting for company to show up. The outlines of her plan began to suggest itself. In a movie it would be amusing—but, here? I wasn’t entirely enthused.

  If fact, I didn’t like it at all.

  “Does it hurt when your IQ falls so hard?” I asked.

  She wrinkled her brow and pouted, as though trying to understand were a labor just this side of childbirth.

  I laughed reluctantly.

  “Really, is this wise?” I persisted. “Couldn’t we just sneak in and take what we want?”