“What do you mean? Who are they?”
Second toll. Third toll.
The ghost laughed and shook his insubstantial head. “You’re not going to leave it be, are you? I can see it in th’ folds of your brain!”
Fourth toll of the bell. Fifth.
“Why are you telling me these things?” Palmer demanded. “Why?”
“Because you put flowers on me grave, that’s why!” Chaz replied. “We dead are a sentimental lot.”
Sixth. Seventh.
Halfway up the block mounted policemen appeared in the street, riding six abreast, bullhorns held in their hands. Behind them Palmer glimpsed the huge street-sweeping machines, brushes wildly spinning in anticipation of flushing the gutters clean of accumulated filth, human and otherwise. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”
Eighth. Ninth.
Chaz now shimmered with every toll of the bell, like a reflection in a bestirred pool. Palmer tried to push past the throng of revelers, desperate to win one last answer from the specter.
The police on horseback moved inexorably forward, forcing the people milling in the street either back onto the sidewalks or into the bars. “Mardi Gras is over! Everyone go home!”The sanitation trucks blasted their horns as if to punctuate the commandment.
Tenth. Eleventh.
Suddenly a huge, heavy hand closed on Palmer’s shoulder, pinning him to the spot. He looked up to see the brutish features of the man he’d seen skulking in Pangloss’s shrubbery, the one called Kief, the one who looked like a shaved gorilla.
“Renfield say come now.”
Twelfth stroke: Midnight.
Chaz wavered like a laser hologram projected onto smoke. Palmer watched as one of New Orleans’ finest rode through the dead man. He expected the horse, at least, to react to the ghost, but all it did was flare its nostrils, toss its mane and leave a pile of dung in its wake.
“Renfield say you come now!” arrived, ushering in Lent.
The shaved gorilla tightened his grip, causing Palmer to cry out in pain. This made Kief smile, something Palmer definitely wished he hadn’t seen.
Chapter Four
Sonja Blue watched as the police and sanitation workers brought Carnival to an end. She knew that the hard-core partying would continue well until dawn, but from now on it would have to be indoors, not on the streets. The harlequin’s mask had been exchanged for the sackcloth of the penitent. She lifted her gaze from the streets, watching the spirits of the dead spiral upward like bats leaving a cave. Neither variety of tourist would be staying to take communion.
She frowned and pulled the envelope from her pocket, turning it over and over as if by handling it she could divine its contents. Pangloss. She was surprised to realize it had been a decade since they last met face-to-face. Like most Pretenders, her sense of time had become distorted, and was increasingly difficult for her to distinguish months from years.
She ran her fingers over the wax seal, her mood darkening as she recalled the good doctor’s treachery below the streets of Rome. The seal cracked easily, falling in three separate pieces at her feet. The letter was on expensive stationery that felt like silk and smelled of cologne. The penmanship was exquisitely baroque. No doubt Pangloss still favored an old-fashioned quill pen.
My Dear Sonja,
Please forgive the convoluted method by which this letter had been delivered. I have attempted to contact you on numerous occasions, through various menials, but you are a difficult woman to communicate with in such a manner. However, I do not hold the rash disposal of my minions against you. In many ways, I find your gift for carnage reassuring. It has been far too long since we last spoke, and I fear that our prior meeting has resulted in an unfavorable view of me. In the years since we last met, I have followed your antics with great interest, and found your handling of the Catherine Wheele situation gauche but effective. You have a natural talent for atrocity, my dear. It needs refining, but I believe you have it in you to produce a tableau on the level of Baron Luxor’s Jonestown or Lord Kinksi’s classic Texas Tower massacre. But I am not writing simply to compliment your style. No, there is much I must tell you concerning Morgan. You can contact me through the human, Palmer.
Sonja looked at her left hand, the one the private investigator had touched. She had not recognized him as sensitive when they first met—possibly because he was unaware of his own talent—so she had been unshielded at the moment of contact. The result had been a barrage of sensory images, the most vivid that of a scarlet-clad woman armed with a smoking gun, before breaking contact. The exchange had been unexpected and unwelcome, but she had gleaned enough information from the jumble to discern that Palmer was exactly what he thought he was: a free agent.
Perhaps, after all these years, it was time to finally get back in touch with the “family”, after all.
Renfield’s pallid bureaucrat’s features broke into something like a smile at the sight of Palmer being dragged into the room by the ogre. “Ah! Seeing that Kief has reeled you in, I assume you must have fulfilled your part of the bargain. You did succeed in delivering the letter, did you not, Mr. Palmer?”
“Yeah, I delivered your fucking letter!” Palmer tried to jerk free of Kief’s grip, only to hear the seams in his jacket tear. “What the hell are you trying to pull, Renfield?”
“Mr. Palmer, if you continue to struggle, I will tell Kief to pull your right arm off and beat you with it,” Renfield warned, smiling that empty smile of his.
Palmer immediately fell still. He glanced around the room, which was empty save for Renfield and the chair he was sitting in, and wondered if the louvered shutters were nailed shut. If not, he might stand a chance of escape, providing Kief loosened his grip and he didn’t break every bone in his body jumping from the third-floor balcony onto the overgrown garden patio below.
“I wouldn’t recommend trying such heroics, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield smiled, crossing and re-crossing his legs like a bored personnel manager at a job interview. “The shutters are, indeed, nailed shut. No need to look so surprised! Of course I can read your mind—what little there is of it. You’re an open book to me. Or should I say short story? You may let go of him now, Kief. I can handle Mr. Palmer from here. Go and watch the door.”
The vise clamping his shoulder disappeared as Kief lumbered out of the room, pausing at the door to give Palmer a final, hungry look.
“Go on! Go on! Do as I say!” snapped Renfield, waving at the goon as if shooing a bothersome child out of the kitchen. “You’ll get your share, as always!”
Once Kief was safely on the other side of the door, Palmer swung around to face Renfield, his hands balled into fists. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? If I don’t get some answers I’m gonna—”
“You’re going to die, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield said coolly.
Suddenly fire coursed through Palmer’s veins, turning his blood to slag. His intestines boiled in their own juices as his bones powdered into ash. His eyeballs exploded and dribbled down his cheeks like egg yolks. He tried to scream, but his lungs were full of burning water.
Then the fire disappeared as quickly as it descended, leaving Palmer on the bare floor, knees drawn up under his chin. He could taste blood in his mouth from having bitten his tongue.
“Wha-What did you do to me?” he rasped.
“I killed you, Mr. Palmer,” Renfield replied matter-of-factly. “And I will continue to kill you until I grow bored or you lose your mind, whichever comes first. Frankly, I can’t understand what it is Pangloss finds so fascinating about you. True, you have some wild talent,” he sniffed. “But all the other mental and emotional baggage you carry— empathy, sympathy, the capacity for love—is simply not worth the effort of deprogramming!”
Without warning, extreme cold shot through Palmer, spearing his nervous system with a million icicles. His lungs filled with ice crystals and his urine turned to slush in his bladder. He whimpered as his toes and fingers turned black and fell away like wilted pe
tals.
Suddenly Renfield was back, except now his head was wreathed in a strange glow the color of a fresh bruise. He had abandoned his chair and was kneeling beside Palmer, staring into his face. “Of course, I have no intention of allowing you to survive this little ordeal,” he said with a nasty smile, his normally wan features now flushed with color. “I’ve worked too long to allow some upstart to replace me. You think I didn’t notice how he looked at you?” His voice quavered, drunk on emotions long held in check, his eyes bright and feral as a starved coyote’s. “He promised me power and life eternal! Me, not you! He told he loved me, that he needed me! But that was just a lie. But I’ll make sure he never has you. I’ll tell him you couldn’t handle the deprogramming. It won’t be a lie, really. And once I give you to Kief for disposal, no one will know the difference! Not even the Doctor!”
Just then the louvered shutters shattered inward in a spray of splintered wood as a leather-clad figure landed on the bare floor, snarling like an enraged panther. Palmer felt the numbness in his limbs vanish as Renfield turned his attention to the intruder. The reverse-negative halo surrounding his head pulsed, snapping forth a whip-like tendril.
The leather-clad figure rose, revealing itself to be none other than the elusive Sonja Blue. She motioned with her left hand, as if batting away a worrisome insect.
“You call that a psychic attack?” she laughed. “No wonder Pangloss is looking to upgrade!”
Palmer got to his feet, surprised to find the recent agonies he’d undergone had left him physically unscathed. Sonja grabbed Renfield by his lapels, pulling him so close they were literally nose-to nose. As Palmer looked at her, he saw a spiky crown of reddish-black light radiating from her head, flickering like a defective neon sign.
“Kief!” Renfield shrieked.
“Where’s Morgan?” she growled.
“Do you honestly believe I’d tell you?” Renfield sneered.
“You’ve got a point,” she agreed, letting go of his jacket.
Renfield smiled smugly as he straightened his lapels, only to have her grab him by the jaw and force his head sharply upward, just as the door to the room banged inward, snapping its hinges.
Kief squeezed through the doorway, his piggy little eyes moving from Palmer to Sonja before settling on Renfield’s corpse. Sonja stepped forward, motioning for Palmer to get behind her. He saw that she held an open switchblade in one hand.
“Jesus Christ, woman, there’s no way you can go up against that goon with just a knife!”
She waved him silent, never taking her eyes off the hulking figure filling the doorway. “Keep quiet! I know what I’m doing!”
Kief made a rumbling noise deep in his throat and stepped forward, sniffing the air like a hunting dog. He glanced at them suspiciously, his nostrils flaring, but did not offer to attack. Instead, his attention seemed fixed on Renfield’s dead body. Saliva dripping from his lower lip in thick ropes, Kief abruptly emitted a loud squealing sound, like that of a hog at a trough, and pounced on the corpse.
Sonja motioned for him to head for the door, following after him, her eyes fixed on the drooling goon as he Palmer heard fabric rip as the giant tore at the dead man’s clothes like an eager opening a Christmas present.
“What’s he doing’?” Palmer whispered.
“You don’t want to know.”
Chapter Five
Palmer sat on a bar stool, a glass of bourbon in his hand, and tried to piece together the insanity he now he found himself mired in. He had always prided himself on his ability to adapt to adverse conditions. After all, he learned how to cope when his family kicked him out of the house at the tender age of seventeen, didn’t he? He’d survived three hellish months on an Alabama work gang, back when being a hitchhiker with weird-looking hair was a criminal offense. He’d watched friends unwilling to admit they were no longer as young as they used to be succumb to drugs and disease. There was no percentage in denying the inevitability of change. Evolve or die: he should have it tattooed on his forehead.
He took another swallow, glancing over the rim of his drink at his savior. She sat on the stool next to him, scanning their surroundings to make sure they hadn’t been followed. Palmer was uncertain as to whether he trusted the mirror-eyed woman, but did not see he had any choice.
“Is Pangloss really your grandfather?” he asked.
She shrugged. “In a way. But if you’re asking if he is my biological grandfather? No, he is not.”
“That what I thought,” Palmer grunted. “He’s nowhere near old enough to have a grandchild your age.”
“Pangloss is at least fifteen hundred years old, Mr. Palmer.”
“So I’m lousy at guessing ages.”
“You seem rather calm, considering what you’ve just experienced.”
“After talking to the dead, discovering I possess psychic powers and being brain-raped by a crazed telepath, being told my employer is a vampire is rather anticlimactic.”
“You spoke with the dead?” she frowned.
“Actually, it was more the other way around. Your old boyfriend is a real chatterbox.”
“You saw Chaz?”
Palmer nodded, watching her for signs of a reaction. If the news affected her in any way, it did not show in her demeanor.
“And what, exactly, did he have to say?”
“That I should avoid you like the plague and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“It seems death has given him some smarts,” she said with a humorless laugh.
“He also said you killed him.”
“The dead don’t lie,” she replied. “I have been a murderer for a very long time, Mr. Palmer. Killing is a habit of mine. Chaz was my partner for some years. He was like you—a sensitive. He was a small-time hustler when I met him, rooking drug dealers and petty criminals. We clicked. It was good-for a while. Then there was trouble. Chaz ended up selling me out, even going so far as betraying me with a kiss—he always did have a flair for the theatrical. I ended up spending six months locked away in a madhouse because of him. I do not expect loyalty from humans, but treachery is another matter altogether. His death was not just, but it was fair.”
“There was also a boy...” Palmer’s throat tightened at the memory of Jimmy Eichorn’s blood. “A boy with blue hair.”
“Yes, I remember. He was one of the Blue Monkeys. I take it he is still alive?”
“If you want to call it that.”
She shrugged. “He possessed information, and I was, well, let’s just say I was in need at the time, and leave it at that.”
“But he was only fifteen—” Palmer protested.
“And already guilty of gang rape and second-degree murder,” Sonja countered. “Do not waste your sympathy on him, Mr. Palmer. Like I said, what I do is not just, but it is fair.”
It was a couple hours before dawn when Sonja showed him to his room. She lived in a large attic apartment on the far end of Decatur Street, overlooking the French Market. The room’s furnishings consisted of a narrow bed and nothing else.
“Sorry I can’t offer you posher accommodations, but I normally don’t entertain guests,” she explained. “But you’ll be safe here. I’ll be keeping guard to make sure Pangloss’s pet ogre hasn’t caught your scent and tracked you down again.”
“Ogre?” Palmer said with a disbelieving laugh. “Is that what you call that thing?”
“It certainly wasn’t a tooth fairy,” she replied drily. “Ogres are big and dumb and have some seriously nasty dietary habits. They could get away with eating children and looting villages back in the Dark Ages, but nowadays it tends to attract attention. That’s why most of them sign on as muscle for big shots like Pangloss. They serve as walking garbage disposals, taking care of their masters’ ‘empties’. This is how Renfield planned to make you ‘disappear’, if you haven’t figured that out by now.”
“But why would Pangloss want to kill me?”
“He doesn’t want you dead, Palmer,” Sonja replied.
“That was Renfield’s goal, not Pangloss’. No, the Good Doctor wants you twisted.” Sonja replied. “For you to be of any use to him, he has to completely destroy your ego so that your needs and desires are focused on him. You must be willing to live-and die-for your master. Any vestige of human emotion, except those required by your master, is systematically erased. Obviously, Renfield was under orders to twist you, so you could be added to Pangloss’ stable of servants, so to speak. But he became jealous of you and rebelled. You’re lucky he wanted to kill you, or you’d be Pangloss’ mind-slave right now.”
“Yeah. ‘Lucky’ was just the word I was looking for,” Palmer said sourly.
Sonja peered out the window of her attic apartment, searching the early morning shadows for signs of the ogre. She doubted it had the brains to come looking for them without being told to do so, but she’d learned the hard way never to underestimate the Good Doctor. She plucked Pangloss’s letter from inside her jacket, flattening the paper against the windowsill.
There is much I must tell you concerning Morgan.
Her hands balled themselves into tight fists as she read his name. She exhaled a nervous, shaky breath. She had spent the better part of her unlife searching for the vampire who had raped a teenaged girl, tainted her blood, and turned her into something that called itself Sonja Blue.
Now Pangloss, the vampire responsible for Morgan’s creation, was tempting her with information concerning his whereabouts. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried such a tactic. The last time had been under the streets of Rome, in a catacomb held sacred to the shadow races that manipulated mankind. She had been too proud to agree to Pangloss’s ‘business proposition’, back then, and it was lucky to have escaped his wrath. What was the old bastard planning this time? It was not in his nature to volunteer information freely. He wanted—or, more likely, needed—something from her in exchange.
You can contact me through the human, Palmer.
It was obvious Pangloss intended to use the private investigator to lure her closer, since he knew she would never allow a twisted sensitive or a Pretender within striking distance. But it was equally clear that once Palmer had finished his purpose, Pangloss would see to it his mind was suitably broken in order to use him as a replace for the not-so-dearly departed Renfield. So what was she to do with Palmer? Part of her, that which she thought of as the Other, knew what it wanted to do with him, but she refused to listen to its counsel.
In the Blood (Sonja Blue) Page 5
