In the Blood (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  She shook herself, chasing the comforting, numbing thoughts from her head. If she gave up, she would simply be giving him what he wanted. She had to stay angry if she was going to keep him from winning. She has to be strong, if not for herself, then for Lethe.

  “You can’t fool me anymore, ‘Father’!” she spat. “I’m not going back!”

  The pyrotic, its skin the color of barbecued meat, wandered over to the corner of the room where an old television sat bolted atop a pedestal stand. Although its eyes resembled hard-boiled eggs, this did not seem to impinge it ability to navigate. Suddenly the theme to The Beverly Hillbillies came blaring from the speakers at full volume.

  Morgan spun around, his face livid. “Turn that shit off! Renfield! Get it away from that damn idiot box!”

  As the psychic approached the elemental, the pyrotic made a noise like live steam escaping a radiator. After a tense second or two, the pyrotic stepped aside, allowing the Renfield to turn off the television. Suddenly there was a loud report and one side of the Renfield’s head disappeared in a spray of blood and brains. Morgan, his ears ringing from the gunshot, turned back to find Anise pointing a .38 directly between his eyes.

  “Put the gun down, Anise,” he said sternly.

  She pulled the trigger a second time. However, her hands were shaking so badly the slug struck Morgan in the shoulder instead of the head.

  “Nice try, Anise. But no cigar.”

  “My name’s Lakisha, asshole!” she snarled as she shoved the muzzle of the under her chin and fired a third and final time. Her head opened like a piñata, spraying the wall with the raw material of memory.

  Nasakenai removed the bloodstained bundle from the bed and held it out to his master while Morgan stared at the mess dripping from the walls as if divining omens.

  The vampire grimaced at the sight of the mutant baby’s hideous puckered mouth and bat-like nose. Enraged, he snatched up the offending corpse and shook it like a rag doll.

  “This is Howell’s doing! He assured me the child would pass for human! The bastard lied to me! Lied! I’ll make that junkie pay for this!” He hurled the dead baby at its mother’s body, turning his back on the tableau in disgust. “Torch it! I don’t want any evidence left behind!”

  The pyrotic nodded its understanding and stepped forward. A gout of liquid flame leapt from its mouth, like the stream from a flamethrower, coating the bed and its lifeless occupants. Within seconds the odor of burning mattress and roasting meat filled the room.

  Morgan stepped outside and scowled at the night sky. His mouth tasted of ash and failure, and there was only one thing that could wash it away: the blood of his enemy, the woman called Sonja.

  “Keep your hands where I can see ‘em!”

  Morgan turned to see an elderly man armed with a double-barreled shotgun hurrying towards him from across the parking lot. The inn-keeper’s bathrobe flapped open, exposing faded pajama bottoms and a stained T-shirt.

  “What in hell’s going on here?” the old man demand. “I heard gunshots! Where’s the Smiths?”

  “Smiths?” Morgan raised an eyebrow in amusement.

  “ You better answer me, fellah, or I’m liable to blow a hole in you! I ain’t one to be fucked with!”

  “Indeed,” Morgan agreed.

  Just then Nasakenai and the pyrotic stepped out of the motel room to stand on either side of Morgan. Although neither man was armed, the motel manager frowned and took an automatic step backward. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the flames reflected in the windows.

  “You crazy bastards set fire to my place!”

  Morgan, bored with the confrontation, turned his back on the man. “Take care of him,” he yawned.

  “Where you think you’re going, asshole?” The manager’s voice wavered as he fought to control his anger. He stepped forward, shouldering the shotgun. “You’re staying put until the state police get here!”

  In response the pyrotic belched forth a fireball the size of a cabbage, which struck the old man square in the chest. He dropped his weapon and frantically clawed at the flames eating his clothes and skin, only to spread it to his hands and upper arms. Screaming like an angry blue jay, the old man threw himself to the ground and rolled in the dirt and gravel, spreading the fire to his pajama pants and hair. During his final, conscious moments, he tried to drag himself back the way he came, his ears filled with the sound of his own flesh hissing and crackling like bacon fat in a frying pan. He succeeded in crawling six feet before he was completely consumed.

  The pyrotic squatted next to the smoldering remains and inhaled the blue-white flames back into his nose and open mouth. The intense heat had reduced the old man’s skull to the size of an orange. Nasakenai signaled impatiently for the elemental to get back in the Mercedes.

  Morgan slid behind the wheel of the Ferrari, sneering at Anise’s crude hotwiring job. Within seconds he was speeding down the highway, the Rolls and Mercedes following in his wake. The night was young and there was much to do.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “What the hell are we gonna do with a baby, for crying out loud?” Palmer exclaimed. “I don’t know the first thing feeding them, do you?”

  Lethe, nestled in an impromptu bassinet made from clean towels and an open bureau drawer, waved her arms and kicked her legs as if semaphoring her agreement with Palmer’s statement.

  “Well, here’s where you’re gonna learn,” Sonja replied, tossing a box of disposable diapers at him like a medicine ball.

  “If you think I’m taking care of that, you’re crazy!” he snorted.

  “You can’t just stick the kid in a tube sock and hose her off once a week,” Sonja pointed out. “I bought enough canned formula from the market down the street to last her a few days, plus a couple of bottles and a pacifier. You can heat up her formula in the guest microwave. We promised Anise we’d take care of her…”

  “You promised, not me!” Palmer said with a shake of his head. “I’ll fight fuckin’ monsters for you, babe; I’ll even engage in breaking and entering. But I am not changing diapers! Besides, how do you know she won’t turn into something like the first one?”

  “She’s just a baby! There’s nothing to be worried about.”

  “If she’s ‘just’ a baby, what is it with her eyes?”

  Sonja plucked at her ward’s makeshift blankets, Lethe peeked out of her swaddling, regarding her with golden, pupil-less eyes, and gave Sonja a toothless grin.“Okay, so her eyes are screwed up. Is that a fuckin’ crime?”

  “You weren’t the one her evil twin tried to turn into Gerber’s strained beef!” Palmer countered.

  Lethe gurgled and kicked and waved her arms even more. Sonja had to admit she had very little experience with children, especially ones so young, but she was certain Anise’s child was unusually active for a baby not even a day old. She’d be damned if she was going to mention that fact to Palmer. He was spooked enough as it was.

  “Look, Palmer, I’m not asking you to take her to raise. I’m just asking you to baby-sit for a couple of hours. If we’re going to catch a jet to Yucatan, I have to check with a few of my...associates. And I sure as hell can’t do it dragging around a papoose.”

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” he sighed. “But just this once.”

  “Thanks. I’ll try to be quick about it,” Sonja promised him as she headed out the door. “Everything you need to fix her bottle should be in the grocery bag. Just read the labels on the can—they’re pretty self-explanatory.”

  As the door closed behind her, Palmer grimaced and turned his disapproving gaze to Lethe in her sock-drawer bassinette.

  “Sure, you’re cute now. But if you try anything funny, you’re going out the fuckin’ window. You got that, munchkin?” he warned, waving a finger at the newborn for emphasis.

  Lethe cooed and yawned, exposing soft pink gums, and wrapped a tiny hand around his finger.

  “Yeah, well, don’t you forget it.”

  The pay phone stood on th
e corner of Guerrero and Twenty-First Street, opposite an electronics repair shop with dusty windows full of half assembled or partially computer monitors. The black-and-chrome face of the phone was covered with graffiti; the coin box had been forced open and a yellow adhesive sign bearing the legend OUT OF ORDER was plastered over the coin slot.

  Sonja scanned the corner. Across the street, a couple of young men dressed in matching leather jackets and pants strolled arm in arm, walking their Pomeranian, while an intense-looking middle-aged man with heavy eyebrows ducked into an espresso bar. Somewhere a police siren wailed, throwing echoes against the buildings that lined the street. Satisfied the area was clean, she sauntered from her post inside a nearby doorway and picked up the dead receiver. The plastic was cold and hard in her hand.

  She placed the earpiece to her head and casually stabbed the pay phone’s push buttons. There was stone silence, then the sound of a receiver half a country away being lifted off its hook. “Yeah?” said a heavy, almost liquid voice.

  “I need to talk to Malfeis.”

  The voice on the other end slurped. “Yeah. Sure. Who calling?”

  “The Blue Woman.”

  Suddenly Malfeis was on the line. She could tell by the clicking of dentures that he had exchanged the skate punk for something older. “Sonja! Chicky-baby! Sorry ‘bout the slug. Breakin’ in a nephew—what can I say? So, what can I do for you?”

  “Mal, I’m between your cousin and the deep blue sea out here. I need magic.”

  “What about Li Lijing? Can’t he hook you up?”

  Sonja shook her head. “This is out of his league. I need serious mojo.”

  “Uh, look, sweetie, I wish I could help you out, but…”

  “But what?” she frowned.

  “I don’t know what you did out there, cupcake, but Morgan’s stock’s falling like a lead turd in the Mariana Trench! And a lot of the big boys in the First Hierarchy aren’t exactly overjoyed, if you catch my drift. I’m in deep with the family over this, Sonja. I’m under orders not to give you the time of day, much less tell you where to score.”

  “Mal! Damn you, you know I’m good for it! I can get you Mengele’s jawbone! The real one, not that fake they dug up in South America. C’mon, I’m not shitting you—I gotta score!”

  “Okay,” he sighed. “Tell you what; since you’ve been such a good customer over the years, I’m gonna help you out. But just this once, capisce? I don’t want it getting around I’m a soft touch.”

  “Thanks, Mal! I owe you!”

  “More than you realize. Okay, there’s this bar south of Market called the Shadow Box. Go there and wait for my operative. He should be there in an hour.”

  “What’s he look like?”

  “Don’t worry—you’ll know him when you see him.”

  It was after midnight and things were just getting heated up at the Shadow Box. A deejay standing atop a neon-lit dais was busily mixing a thundering mixture of hip-hop, retro disco, and acid house. Lights hanging from the rafters threw starkly elongated shadows of the dancers onto the club’s walls, who moved in a highly stylized manner and seem more focused on their own shadows than their partners. It was times like these that she found herself embarrassed at ever having been human.

  “Talk about dancing with yourself,” she muttered in disgust.

  She wished Mal had picked a rendezvous site a little less crowded, but beggars don’t exactly get a choice in such matters. A gaggle of stylishly dressed future executives-on-the-make hurried by, jostling her in their rush to the dance floor. She briefly contemplated hamstringing one of them, only to push the thought aside. She couldn’t risk calling attention to herself just yet.

  Bars and nightclubs always brought out the worst in her. She suspected it had something to do with the volatile emotions generated in such places, which often stimulated the Other and excited it to mayhem. Even now she could feel its ominous presence just below the surface of her ego, like a shark patrolling its territory.

  The music got faster and louder, causing the silhouettes on the walls to jerk and prance like Burmese shadow-puppets. She consulted her watch. Mal’s contact would be arriving soon.

  The hairs on the back of her neck bristled as a spiky, adrenaline-charged surge of anger and excitement, as cold and bracing as vodka straight from the freezer, surged through her system. However, the emotion wasn’t hers, but unintentionally broadcast by someone in the bar. Someone really pissed off.

  Sonja turned to scan the interior of the club, but all she saw was a solid wall of young men and women, dancing, drinking and talking over the music blaring from the speakers. She shifted spectrums, searching for the telltale aureole that marked a Pretender, but there was nothing there but the comparatively weak flickering of human consciousness, augmented by drugs or hormones.

  It was then that the second jolt of hatred struck her, causing her to gasp as if caught in the grip of an intense orgasm. The Other moaned in delight, forcing Sonja to bite her lip in hopes the pain and blood would sidetrack it. Emotions as dark and powerful as hate provided vampires with as much nourishment as a seven-course dinner and a high that made crack look like baby aspirin. She had to get out of here. Fuck Mal’s mojo-worker. She had to get away from this place, crammed full of empty-eyed food tubes, before she lost control and the Other rose in her place. She hadn’t fed since she took down that pickpocket in Chinatown, making her susceptible to the Other’s inner voice. She had to leave or something really bad was going to happen.

  She pushed away from the bar and began shouldering her way to the exit. She bumped against a club-goer, sloshing beer on his fashionably distressed designer jeans.

  “Hey, bitch! Watch it!” he snarled, grabbing her by the elbow.

  Sonja flashed her shaded eyes in his direction and growled like a caged tiger. The startled club-goer let go as she resumed pushing her way through the mass of bodies. Suddenly another hand, this one far stronger, clamped itself onto her shoulder.

  A third wave of hate flowed into, this time so strong it was like being slammed in the heart with a needle full of adrenaline.

  As she turned around to face her attacker, she could not help but laugh at her own foolishness. “That devil-bastard set me up! I’d damn him to hell if it wasn’t redundant. Next time I see him, I’m gonna cut his stash with the bones of martyrs.”

  Fell bared his fangs in ritual challenge. “I don’t know what you’re babbling about, whore, and I don’t care! I’m going up make you pay for killing Anise and our baby!”

  “Do you always talk like a fucking cliché?” she sneered.

  He moved fast, even by vampire standards. Sonja’s head rocked back, blood filling her mouth, before she realized he’d raised his fists. The crowd surrounding them was too densely packed for her to do more than stagger back two or three steps.

  “Okay. I deserved that and I took it,” she said, wiping the blood from her chin. “But I didn’t kill Anise. I’m telling you the truth, no matter what your so-called ‘Father’ told you.”

  This time she saw his punch coming and grabbed his fist, stopping it in mid-air. Fell grimaced and tried to pull free, but she refused to let him go.

  “I’m trying to be nice, but you’re not making it easy,” she warned him. “I don’t want to hurt you, kid. But I will if I have to.”

  Fell tried to hit her with his other hand, but she stopped that one the same way. “Let me go, murderer!” he snarled as he tried to wrest himself free of her grip.

  The hate inside him flowed into Sonja like smoke into a bottle. The charge she received was so powerful the hair on her head lifted like the crest of a cockatoo. She laughed and blue-white sparks flew from the tip of her tongue. Her voice sounded like she’d gargled with ground glass and battery acid.

  “Why should I?” the Other snarled. “I don’t know how Morgan thinks he’s going to create his own little super-race with a lap dog like you for a stud. Go ahead, lover boy! Keep hating! Hate me as hard as you can! It only ma
kes me stronger! But if you wanna kill me, you gotta play hardball! Think you can handle that?”

  A clutch of executive secretaries out for a night on the town screamed as Fell crash-landed onto their table, sending their drinks flying in every direction. He instantly righted himself like a cat and launched himself at his enemy, hurling aside surprised club-goers as if they were bowling pins. She calmly stood her ground as he rushed towards her, only to dodge his blows with the swiftness of a cobra at the very last second, chuckling in amusement as if he was nothing more than a clumsy schoolboy. The sound of the Other’s demonic laughter spurred him to even greater fury, delivering rapid-fire blows to her head and upper torso that would have killed a human but merely staggered her.

  As they battled, those closest to them in the surrounding crowd desperately tried to escape the carnage, only to be pushed back by those eager to find out what was happening. It wasn’t until the switchblade came out, however, that the screams began in earnest. Fell snatched up one of the vacated chairs tables, wielding it like a lion tamer. As he lunged at her, she dropped down and swept his legs out from under him. Fell suddenly found himself pinned to the floor by his opponent, who grinned down at him as she squatted atop his chest, a dark fire seeming to burn behind the tint lenses that obscured her eyes.

  But as the Other, blood streaming from her nose, raised the silver switchblade to plunge it into Fell’s heart, her face abruptly contorted, as if in pain. She shook her head, as if trying to clear it of an annoying voice, as her nemesis ascended once more from the pit and laid claim to the body they both shared.

  Sonja, once more in control, snapped the switchblade shut and returned it to her jacket. She then grabbed Fell by his long yellow hair and yanked him to his feet. He tried to pull away, but she refused to let go. She pointed at the people on the dance floor, entranced by deafening rhythms and their own shadows.