The vargr halted in mid-step, its growl dissolving into a whine at the sight of the silver blade shaped like a frozen flame.
She launched herself at the werewolf, knocking it to the ground hard enough to make it yelp in surprise. The two opponents wrestled on the filthy bricks, knocking over even more garbage cans. Startled rats scurried for cover as the werewolf and the vampire battled one another in the filth.
Sonja, bleeding from a score of cuts from the man-beast’s talons, cried out as the vargr sank its teeth into her shoulder, worrying her like a dog’s chew toy. She slashed at the lycanthrope and was rewarded by a yowl of genuine pain and the smell of spilled blood. The creature let go of her shoulder, allowing her to stagger back onto her feet. She looked up and saw the vargr fleeing down the alleyway. He was on the verge of reverting to his human persona, and the way he was hunched over, clasping his belly, told her he was trying to keep his intestines from spilling out.
Suddenly her vision began to dim and her legs buckled underneath her. The werewolf’s attack had weakened her more than she realized. When she opened her eyes again it was to discover she had blacked out while propped against the alley wall. A strange man was kneeling over, rifling through her pockets. Her glasses were still on, so he couldn’t see that her eyes were open and that she was watching him as he counted the money in her wallet. The man gasped in surprise as the dead woman suddenly grabbed him by his shirt front and pulled him close, as if to whisper something in his ear.
Then there was only fear.
Chapter Eight
Russell Howard was a satisfied man. He was only thirty-seven, but already well on his way to becoming a multimillionaire. It wasn’t that long ago that he had been yet another struggling real estate agent, handling third-and fourth-rate rental properties on the wrong side of Army. Now he had a Lamborghini and his new office took up half a floor in a sparkling new high rise. His clients were amongst the wealthiest in the Bay Area, if not the state of California, and his name and face regularly graced the pages of the Chronicle. Yes, Russell Howard was on his way to very big things, thanks to his oh-so-silent partner.
However, despite all the doors his partner had opened for him, he didn’t like to think too much about him, as it tended to make his palms sweat and his brain itch. Sometimes thinking about his partner even gave him nightmares. But if there was anything Howard had learned from life, it was that money made everything better. And as long as the money continued to roll in, he was content to rarely think about what his partner truly was.
Howard watched the lengthening shadows fall across the floor and walls of his office. He’d just finished a late afternoon conference with a client and was trying to decide whether to go home to his family or treat himself to an escort. If he put in a call to the agency in the next half hour, he could be home in time to read his four-year-old daughter a bedtime story. Right now her favorite was Yertle the Turtle…
Russell Howard personal secretary looked up from her desktop computer screen to see two strangers, a man and a woman, enter the reception area. She frowned and glanced down at the calendar on her desk. It was near the end of the day and no further appointments were scheduled.
“May I help you?” she asked, moving to intercept them as they headed toward the door leading to her employer’s office.
The man spoke first. “We’re here to see Mr. Howard.”
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, her voice dripping icicles as she eyed his companion’s outfit.
“No. But he’ll see us anyway,” the woman in the leather jacket and mirrored glasses said.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Howard is a very busy man and—”
“It’s time to go home,” the woman in the sunglasses said firmly.
The secretary turned around and went back to her desk, switched off her computer, retrieved her purse from its hiding place in the filing cabinet, and marched out the door.
Russell Howard was in the process of calling the escort agency when two strangers, a man and a woman, entered his office unannounced. The man was in his late thirties, dressed in dark pants, a bulky sweater and a black raincoat. His hair was short and wiry, with streaks of gray at the temples, and his chin was bisected by a narrow width of beard that made him look like a punk pharaoh. The woman was much younger, wearing reflective sunglasses, tight-fitting jeans, steel-tipped boots and a battered leather jacket over a T-shirt, with dark, unruly hair made her look like an exotic bird.
“Who let you in?” he scowled, hanging up the phone. He stabbed the intercom button on his desk. “Patricia! Get these people out of my office!”
“She’s gone home,” the man said. “You work her too hard.”
“Who are you?” he asked, uncertain as to whether he should be worried by the arrival of the odd-looking couple. “What do you want?”
“My name is Sonja Blue, Mr. Howard,” the woman said, stepping forward. “My associate here is Mr. Palmer. As to what we want: we are looking for information about a certain individual, one we have reason to believe you deal with on a regular basis.” She motioned to the filing cabinets lining his office. “Check ‘em out.”
The man called Palmer nodded and yanked open the nearest cabinet and began rifling the files.
“You can’t do that!” Howard shouted, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato. “Get out of here before I call the police!”
The woman called Sonja Blue clucked her tongue reproachfully. “I don’t think the person I’m looking for would appreciate you calling the cops, Mr. Howard.” She took another step in the realtor’s direction, menace oozing from her like an expensive French perfume.
Howard’s heart iced over. He was all too familiar with the way the woman handled herself, as if impervious to threats and accustomed to power. Just like his partner. He made a strange gargling noise that sounded like a deaf-mute’s attempt at speech, his eyes riveted on the woman as she advanced on him. When she leaned across the desk and grabbed him, it was with the speed and precision of a cobra striking its prey.
He could see his own terrified face, twisted and twinned, reflected in her glasses as she jerked him toward her pale, ice maiden’s face by his silk power tie. His skin oozed beads of sweat like tiny pearls of mercury which raced down his brow and the back of his neck. His fear made her smile, revealing canines as white as new bone and sharper than hypodermics. Howard moaned.
“Pangloss wasn’t lying about this weasel’s connection to Morgan,” she said over her shoulder to her companion, giving Howard’s tie an extra tug. The realtor gasped and coughed and tried to free his neck of the silk garrote. The Windsor knot he’d tied that morning was now the size of a garden pea and could not be budged. The sudden realization that he would have to take a pair of scissors to the two hundred dollar tie in order to remove it was almost enough to make him forget his predicament.
The woman who called herself Sonja Blue abruptly surrendered her grip on the makeshift leash and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his pool table-sized desk. Howard sat upright, attempted to straighten his ruined tie, and put on his best angry tycoon face, trying desperately to reassert himself.
“How dare you come into my office and threaten me in such a manner!” He thundered, reaching for the telephone on his desk. “I’m calling security right!”
“If you touch that phone, I will tear your fingers off, one by one, and feed them to you,” she growled.
Howard blanched and drew his hand back as if the receiver had transformed into a rattlesnake. “What do you want from me?” he asked sullenly.
“I want address of Morgan’s lair and the name he’s using to operate in this city.” When the realtor remained silent, she sighed impatiently and re-crossed her legs. “Mr. Howard, you know what I am. You know what I am capable of. I could pop your memory open like a raw cauliflower and get the information I need that way. But such a drastic measure would lower your IQ by more than fifty points. It’s up to you whether or n
ot you end up reduced to a drooling imbecile.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” Howard insisted.
“Can’t?” Palmer prodded. “Or won’t?”
Howard pulled a monogrammed silk handkerchief from his breast pocket with trembling hands and mopped his forehead. “He’ll kill me if I say anything.”
“And I will kill you if you don’t, Mr. Howard,” Sonja Blue replied icily.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of beef you have with Morgan, but I haven’t done anything—”
“You traffic with monsters, Mr. Howard,” she said, her voice as sharp and cold as a guillotine blade. “Four hundred years ago you would have ended up in the hands of the Inquisition, your feet stuffed into iron boots filled with molten lead. I am far more reasonable than Torquemada, if not as patient. What is your connection to Morgan?”
“N-nothing important,” he stammered.
“Mr. Howard, Morgan would not bother to become involved with a dreary little human such as yourself unless you served some purpose useful to him.”
“Look, he gives me money and I buy and manage properties for him. Nothing illegal about that.”
“Indeed.”
“I also find places for him in the city. He moves around a lot, okay? Never stays anywhere more than a few months. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“No. Nothing at all,” she agreed quietly, apparently lost in thought.
“Sonja?” The man called Palmer was holding aloft a fat manila folder. When Howard saw it he felt his guts knot into a sheepshank.
She took the file and began flipping through the documents inside, occasionally looking up to regard Howard with that impassive, mirrored gaze. Howard patted his forehead with his damp handkerchief.
“Things are starting to make sense,” she said, handing the folder back to Palmer, returning her full attention to Howard. “All of those properties are in the worst parts of Oakland. They’re the one you purchased and manage for your partner?”
“Look, I can explain—”
“I’m sure you can, but you needn’t bother. I know that not all vampires are bloodsuckers. The ones as old and as powerful as Morgan prefer to feed on human despair, hate and anger. And what better breeding ground than some festering hellhole of a slum, where rats bite babies, old women are murdered for their Social Security, and addiction is a way of life?” She smacked her lips and patted her belly in a broad parody of hunger. “That’s good eating!”
Palmer snorted in disgust. “Fuckin’ traitor!”
Sonja nodded in agreement and leaned forward, fixing Howard with her unseen stare. “Do you know what humans such as yourself are called? By your masters, I mean, not your own species. You, Mr. Howard, are a Judas goat; you willingly lead your fellow humans onto the killing floor in exchange for a reward from the butchers. Judas goats like to think themselves immune. But all that means is that, once their usefulness is at an end, they are the last of the livestock to die.”
Howard scribbled something on a piece of scrap paper and pushed it across the desk toward her. “This is the address of Morgan’s condo in the Marina District,” he said nervously. “For God’s sake, don’t let him find out I told you where to find him.”
“And what name is he using?”
“Caron. Dr. Henry Caron.”
“Doctor?”
“Yeah, he’s a shrink.”
The man called Palmer spat in disgust and walked out of the room. As his companion glanced over her shoulder Howard reached for the drawer where he kept his gun. If he was lucky, he could get the drop on both on her and the man. He’d learned enough about creatures like the bitch sitting across from him to know that a bullet in the brain killed them as dead as any human.
It might look a little funny to the cops, but he could claim they were meth addicts who had shown up at his office, looking for trouble, when he’d refused to rent to them. Yeah, that would wash. If there was too much of a fuss, Morgan could pull a few strings and quiet things down. Yes, he told himself as his fingers wrapped about the grip of the chrome-plated pistol. As his fingers wrapped around it, this’ll be as easy as shooting clay pigeons.
Suddenly the woman leapt on to the desk, snarling like a leopard freed from its cage. One second she was sitting in a chair, the next she was squatting atop his desk like a gargoyle, her head thrust forward like an attack dog straining against its leash. The hair on her head bristled like a wolf’s hackle. Without realizing in, Howard instinctively wet himself. She jerked the gun out of his unresisting hand, studying it with mild distaste. She barked a humorless laugh as she turned the weapon over in her hands.
“You’d have to do better than this, buddy, if you want to stop me. I’ve metabolized more .22 slugs than Carter has little liver pills!” She hopped off the desk, leaving deep scratches in the six layers of lacquered finish. After a moment’s contemplation, she tossed the gun back to its owner.
Howard was too surprised to do more than ham-handedly catch it. He stared at the gun, then back at her before setting the weapon aside. He realized there was no way, even at such close range, he would be able to shoot her and still escape live.
“You’re holding out on me, Howard.”
The realtor shook his head in vigorous denial. “I swear I’ve told you everything I know about Morgan. What else do you want?”
“The truth.”
“I told you the truth!”
“Not all of it. You told me what identity Morgan is operating under, yes, and where I can find him when he’s in town. But I want to know where his lair is.”
“Lair?”
“Yes, lair. Lions have them. Bank robbers have them. And every Noble vampire has one, where they can retreat without fear of attack.”
“Look, I told you he has a place in the Marina, just off Fillmore . . .”
Sonja shook her head. “He moves every few months or so—you said so yourself. These places you mentioned are nests, nothing more. I want to know where he can be found when he goes to ground.”
“I don’t know where—”
“Pick up the gun, Mr. Howard.”
The surgical steel civility was back in her voice. Although he did not want to, Russell Howard picked up the discarded .22 by its muzzle.
“Place your left hand on top of the desk, Mr. Howard,” she instructed. “That’s right. Now spread your fingers. Yes, like that. Now wider.”
Howard stared in horrified silence as his left hand did as it was told.
“Now, hit your left hand with the butt of the gun,” she commanded. “Hard.”
Howard gave voice to a strangled cry of pain and terror as the butt of the pistol smashed down onto the middle of his hand. Although his fingers writhed like the legs of a crushed spider, he still could not move his left hand no matter how hard he tried.
“Again.”
As the gun-butt slammed into his hand a second time, something in his palm snapped like a green twig, and the taste of blood flooded his mouth. It took a few seconds for Howard to realize he had bitten through his lower lip.
“Where is Morgan’s lair?” Sonja asked calmly.
Howard whimpered as the pistol broke his left index finger. He hoped he would pass out before every finger on his left hand splintered, but was afraid she wouldn’t permit it.
“Ghost Trap!” he screamed.
“And what, exactly, does that mean?” she asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“It’s the name of this house in the Sonoma Valley,” Howard sobbed, sweat and tears dripping from the end of his nose in greasy drops. “It’s supposed to be haunted or something. Some crazy millionaire built it back before the Depression. I’ve told you everything I know, I swear. Please, just go away and leave me alone.”
“Very well,” she said, with a curt nod. “We will do as you ask. But remember, Mr. Howard: you cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulfur on your sleeve.” With that, the Blue woman turned and walked out of his office, rejoining her partner
in the reception area. A second later, Howard was rewarded by the sound of them leaving.
He slumped forward, cradling his head in his good hand. He was shivering and sweating and stank of fear and urine. Part of him wanted to leap up and chase after the intruders, pistol blazing. But then he remembered how fast the woman moved, and the sound she made when she snarled at him, and his heart began to beat so fast it seemed to stand still.
He glanced at his Rolex. Only fifteen minutes had elapsed since the moment he first saw the strangers in his reception room. Fifteen minutes. One quarter of an hour. That was all it had taken to ruin his life. He picked up the automatic, even though the grip was still tacky with his blood. Although Howard was without religion or faith, he knew there was a Devil. He knew it with a certainty rare among even the most devout ecclesiastics. And no matter how fearsome and cruel the creature that called itself Sonja Blue had been, he knew his partner was a thousand times worse.
“Don’t you think you were kind of rough on that guy?” Palmer asked as they waited for the elevator to take them down to the lobby.
Sonja angled her head in his direction, but because of the glasses, Palmer was uncertain as to whether she was looking at him or back down the hall. She shrugged. “He is a Judas goat; a traitor to his species.”
“Yeah, but maybe he didn’t really know what Morgan was in the beginning..?”
“Oh, he knew, all too well. Just as the President knows what’s held in check within the walls of the Pentagon. He simply found it advantageous to pretend otherwise. He doesn’t even have a Renfield’s excuse of having been twisted against his will.”
The elevator car arrived, empty of passengers. As Palmer stepped inside he heard a muffled report from down the hall. He looked to Sonja, who merely shrugged.
“No matter how far up a Judas goat climbs, it will never get beyond the killing floor.”
Chapter Nine
“Are you sure this is the right address?” Palmer frowned.
“It’s the one Howard gave us. What’s the matter? Were you expecting a gothic castle with gargoyles and a moat?”
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