Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  “Hello, little girl.”

  The phantom child smiled and lifted a hand still chubby with baby fat and waved a greeting in return.

  “Little girl, do you know how I can get to the nucleus of the house?”

  The ghost shook her head. Sonja wished the tiny specter would speak but knew that the dead often lost the ability to communicate coherently after a few years. The dumb show might be aggravating, but at least it was reliable.

  “Is there anyone around who does know?”

  The little girl smiled again, this time nodding. She turned and signaled for Sonja to follow her. Sonja tried not to look at the brains spilling from the back of the child’s smashed skull.

  The ghostly child flickered from room to room like a pale but playful moth while Sonja dutifully followed. Finally the phantom entered a long, narrow room paneled in darkly stained walnut with thirteen bronze satyr faces studding the walls. On closer inspection, Sonja saw old-fashioned gas jets protruding from the collection of grotesquely leering mouths.

  Suddenly there was an icy draft, as if someone had thrown open the door of a massive freezer, and the gas jets burst into flame, filling the room with the odor of perfume and blood.

  The tiny ghost child hurried over to where her mother stood revealed, dressed in a high-collared morning glory skirt. The phantom woman’s hair—the same golden hue as her daughter’s—was puffed at the sides and pulled into a knot atop her head. Even with the left side of her face reduced to pulp, the eye hanging from its stalk onto the ruined cheek, it was obvious she had been a stunningly beautiful woman in life.

  The ghost-child tugged at her mother’s skirts and pointed at Sonja. Her lips moved but all Sonja heard was a skewed, half-speed garble.

  “Mrs. Seward...

  The dead woman looked up, surprised at being recognized. The undamaged side of her face frowned.

  “Mrs. Seward, I need your help in finding my way to the nucleus of Ghost Trap,” Sonja implored, her hand outstretched.

  The phantom woman looked down at her daughter, then at Sonja. As she opened her mouth, the flames issuing from the gas jets intensified. Mrs. Seward, now looking more terrified than terrible, motioned for her child to leave. The little girl obeyed, rolling herself into a ball of witch fire and bouncing from the room. There was a distant whistling sound, as that of air being sliced by an axe, followed by a hollow booming. Whatever was creating the noise was making its way toward the room Sonja was standing in.

  The late Mrs. Seward gestured for Sonja to follow her as she moved to one of the walnut panels set into the wall. Her long, bell-like skirt left the thick dust on the floor undisturbed. She pointed to the molding where the plaster met the paneling and then passed through the wall, leaving Sonja to locate the hidden catch that opened the secret door. The booming sound was so close it rattled the secret panel as it closed behind her.

  Mrs. Seward was waiting for her, glowing in the gloom of the secret passage like a night-light. Sonja followed her spirit guide through the narrow passageway to a cramped circular staircase that pierced Ghost Trap’s various levels. Mrs. Seward motioned for her to go downstairs.

  “How many levels? One? Two?”

  The dead woman held up two transparent fingers and mimicked opening a door. Sonja nodded to show that she understood and began her downward climb. After a couple of steps she paused and looked back at the ghost-woman.

  “You’re trapped in this place, aren’t you? You and the children?”

  The ghost nodded, nearly dislodging her dangling eye.

  “How can you be freed?”

  The ghost hastily traced letters in midair. The ectoplasm hung suspended for a few seconds before wavering and losing shape, like a message left by a haphazard skywriter: Diztroe Tarappe.

  Although the dead were notoriously bad spellers, she understood what she meant. Before Sonja could ask anything else, Mrs. Seward disappeared as suddenly as she had manifested. Sonja shrugged and resumed her descent into the bowels of Ghost Trap.

  On the second level she found a narrow oak doorway at the base of the stairs. She could tell the door opened inward, but other than that had no idea where it might lead or what might be on the other side. Taking a deep breath and hoping it didn’t lead to a room full of hungry ogres, Sonja grasped the handle and yanked it open.

  She found herself faced not by tigers, but with a lady.

  The woman was seated in a tastefully upholstered easy chair, reading a paperback romance novel, her slippered feet resting on an ottoman. The room seemed very cozy, in an old-fashioned, Victorian way. Somewhere nearby a grandfather clock measured out the afternoon. A small, cheery fire crackled away in the fireplace.

  Sonja frowned and moved further into the room, allowing the secret door to silently close behind her. The petite African-American woman seated in the chair had yet to notice the intruder in her sitting room. Just as she began to wonder if she was looking at yet another ghost, albeit a bit more opaque than the last, the woman looked up from her reading and smiled at her, revealing eyes the color of claret. Sonja’s right hand instinctively closed on the switchblade in her pocket.

  “Hello,” said the woman, putting aside her book. “I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you come in. Are you one of our Father’s servants?”

  Sonja adjusted her vision, scanning to see what the vampire sitting before her truly looked like. To her surprise, she did not reveal herself to be a wizened crone or rotting corpse, but remained exactly what she appeared to be: an attractive young African-American woman in her late twenties. As she focused harder, an aura abruptly appeared about the other woman’s neatly corn-rowed head like a halo of fire. Sonja gasped aloud in shock and surprise. The last time she’d seen such a thing was in the mirror.

  “Is there something wrong?”

  Sonja heard Pangloss’s voice echoing in her ears. He is plotting on revolutionizing Pretender society... Something about creating an army of silver-immune vampires...

  As she struggled to her feet, Sonja suddenly realized the vampire was pregnant.

  It worse than even Pangloss could have imagined.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Is something wrong? Should I call Dr. Howell?” The pregnant vampire asked as she reached for a cellular phone resting on the table next to an array of medication vials.

  Before she had a chance to touch the phone, Sonja leapt forward, wrapping her free hand in the other woman’s abundant braids and yanking her head back, exposing her throat. She pressed her switchblade against its pulse point.

  “Who are you?” Sonja growled. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m Anise,” the pregnant vampires said, speaking loudly and slowly, as if communicating with an emotionally disturbed child. She was trying not to sound frightened as she clutched at her swollen belly. “Why are you doing this? You’re hurting me!”

  “Where is Morgan?”

  “You mean Father?”

  Sonja cranked another length of braid around her fist, pulling Anise onto her tiptoes. “He’s not my father, bitch! Answer me, damn you, or I’ll go in and take what I want to know! Who else is in this fuckin’ spook house?”

  Anise’s eyes abruptly flickered to something beyond Sonja’s shoulder. The thought that there might be two of them entered Sonja’s head the same time the fireplace poker came down on her skull.

  As the pain shot through her, she felt the Other throw itself against the bars of its cage like a tiger smelling blood. The Other wanted out, and it wanted out now. The Other wanted to twist the head off the bloat-bellied bitch and gouge the eyes out of whoever the asshole with the poker happened to be, then snatch the little unborn shit from its mother’s womb and snap its neck like a terrier worrying a rat.

  “No. I’m not letting you out,” Sonja snarled between her gritted teeth. “Not yet. Save it for Morgan.” As she struggled to keep the Other under control, another blow fell across her shoulders, knocking her to the floor. This time she felt ribs crack and blood fill h
er mouth.

  “Fell, stop it! I said stop!” Anise shouted as she grappled with her mate for control of the poker.

  The male vampire was tall and thin, his features pale and finely chiseled, with hair the color of raw pine that hung past his shoulders in long, silken tresses. His ruby-red eyes were dilated, like those of a panther scenting its prey. Sonja knew that wild, cruel look all too well.

  “I told you they hated us!” he growled, raising the poker for a final, killing blow. “They’re all crazy with jealousy because Father loves us more than them!”

  “No, Fell!” Anise insisted, staying his hand. “She’s not a Renfield. Look at her. Look!”

  Fell grudgingly lowered the poker and stared at the intruder with his piercing, bright-red eyes.

  “She’s right, you know,” Sonja said, spitting out a mouthful of blood onto the carpet. “I’m not a Renfield.” Without further warning she sprang to her feet before the male vampire called Fell had a chance to react, snatching the weapon from his hand. Anise screamed as Sonja slammed the fire tool’s butt into his abdomen, knocking him to the floor, and then firmly planting her boot on his throat.

  “If you try and make a move, I’ll ram the damn thing through his brain,” she warned, reversing her grip on the poker and holding it just above his eye socket.

  “Go get Father!” Fell hissed, trying not to move. “Do what I say, Anise!”

  Anise shook her head, tears trickling down her cheeks. “No, I’m not leaving you!”

  “You can cry?” Sonja moved the poker away from Fell’s forehead, while keeping her boot firmly planted on his Adam’s apple. There was genuine awe and envy in her voice.

  “Of course I can cry!” Anise sniffled as she wiped at her tears with the flat of her hand. “Everyone can cry.”

  “No. Not everyone,” Sonja said wistfully. “Have you ever seen Morgan cry?”

  Anise stared at her as if Sonja had started speaking in tongues. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Vampires can’t shed tears. At least not ones not made of blood,” Sonja replied. “Nor can they become pregnant. I don’t know what Morgan has up his sleeve, but it looks like he’s really outdone himself.”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is Morgan. I want to know where the bastard is holed up.”

  “You mean our Father?” the couple replied in unison.

  “Stop calling him that!” Sonja snarled, only to have them stare at her as if she’d told them not to call the sky blue or the grass green. She cursed in disgust and removed her foot from Fell’s throat, motioning for him to get up. Fell looked toward Anise, then back at his attacker, as if expecting a trick. “Get up, damn you!” Sonja barked, kicking him in the rump.

  This time Fell did as he was told, hurrying to join Anise. He wrapped his arms protectively around his mate, glowering at Sonja with unalloyed hatred.

  “Well, this is a fine family reunion, isn’t it?” Sonja said with a humorless laugh as she twisted the poker into a pretzel and tossed it aside. “I guess Big Daddy never told you two you had an older sister. Then again, I doubt he knows I even exist.”

  “My wife needs to sit down. Is that okay with you?” Fell asked acidly.

  “Of course; there’s no need to be uncivilized,” Sonja replied. As she watched Fell help his pregnant wife into her easy chair, she realized that their auras were nearly identical to her own, although significantly weaker. She had learned a long time ago how to guess the relative ages of various vampires by the auras they radiated. Anise and Fell were still quite young, by Noble standards, although the Anise’s aura was the more robust of the two. Sonja wondered if that had something to do with the mutant life form she carried inside her. Given their apparent youth and taking her own experience into consideration, she realized that the couple was still ‘mute’—incapable of the telepathic communication.

  “I’ll give the bastard credit—he doesn’t plan small,” she muttered.

  “Don’t use that word when you talk about our Father,” Fell snapped.

  “Why don’t you shut up before I rip out your fuckin’ tongue?” she snarled in reply. “I’m trying to be nice here.”

  “Nice? You call brutalizing my wife and attacking me nice?” he spat.

  “So I’m a little lacking in the social graces,” Sonja shrugged.

  “You seem to know a lot about our—Morgan, as you call him,” Anise said, taking her husband’s hand in hers. “I have never seen a creature such as you, outside of Fell. Not even our Father, the few times He has favored us with His presence, is like us. You say you are our sister. How can that be so? We are the only ones our Father has Made.”

  “You talk about Morgan as if he’s some kind of god.”

  “He is our Maker. He is our Father.” Anise smiled up at her husband, who squeezed her hand in return. “From His essence were we conceived, and in His image were we shaped. We came into being within moments of one another and have been conscious of no other life, no other love.”

  Sonja eyed Anise speculatively. She remembered how, decades ago, she had emerged from a nine-month coma and to discover her long-term memory an utter blank. She remembered how desperate she had been for an identity—any identity—to fill the void inside her. Shortly after her resurrection she had fallen into the hands of a brutal pimp named Joe Lent, who had been more than eager to re-shape her in his image and proscribe the limits of her new world. She remembered how, at the time, she had held Lent in the same awe as Anise and Fell now viewed Morgan. And why not? Lent had given her life form and meaning when she was nothing but a blank slate. She had needed him the same way an empty pitcher needs water. But then he had to go and beat her one time too many…awakening the Other. After killing Lent and taking her first blood, the memories of whom and what she had been before Morgan raped her out of existence had come rushing back. Her life had been a living hell ever since.

  The only way to make them understand what had been done to them was to kick-start their memories and freeing their former personalities. The biggest risk with doing so, however, was that if she wasn’t careful, she might trigger defensive shock. They could very well retreat into catatonia rather than deal with their buried memories. But there was no way around it—it had to be done.

  Sonja knelt before Anise and stared into her face. Although Fell tensed, Anise did not flinch or draw away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But it’s time for childhood to end.”

  She entered the pregnant woman’s mind as if parting a curtain. Anise convulsed if she’d just received a jolt of electricity, her eyes rolling back in their sockets. Her jaws snapped shut, causing an exposed fang to slice her lower lip.

  “What did you do to her?” Fell demanded angrily.

  Sonja was vaguely conscious of Fell’s hands on her person, but she was too busy to shrug him off. All she needed was to give a final little push...

  My name is Lakisha Washington. I grew up in East Oakland; in a part of the city so violent and hopeless the police consider it a free-fire zone. My mother is a junkie who sells herself for drugs. My father is a nameless white man who had twenty dollars and a hard-on. My mother leaves me alone in my crib, squalling in fear of the rats, while she goes to meet her dealer. The neighbors break in and rescue me after six hours of screaming. I live with my grandmother after that. My mother fades from my life. She dies from an overdose on my seventh birthday. It is meaningless to me—like the death of a casual friend of the family. Despite the odds, I thrive in an environment as hostile to innocence as the surface of Venus. I do well in school, striving to prove myself, better myself. I want to escape this place so bad I can taste it. I manage to avoid the pitfalls that trap so many of my friends and fellow classmates: drugs, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism...

  I want more from life than drudging for minimum wage at the corner Kentucky Fried Chicken stand. My determination to succeed inspires respect and contempt among those who have fallen in the trap. I get a reputation for being a “nice” girl, one that’s
going places, but too smart and self-possessed to attract the opposite sex. I graduate valedictorian and land an out-of state scholarship. For the first time in my life I escape the bone-grinding, soul-numbing poverty I was born to, but to which I never succumbed. My grandmother dies in a charity hospital during my sophomore year. Despite my grief, I’m secretly relieved. It means I’ll never have to go back to Oakland ever again.

  I work as hard in college as I did in high school, earning a Degree in Business Administration. To my delight, I’m recruited by a prestigious financial firm headquartered in San Francisco. I return to California, but this time I’m on the right side of the Bay.

  I have a nice apartment in the Twin Peaks district, overlooking the city. From my balcony I can glimpse the place of my birth in the far distance, on those rare occasions I look in its direction. It looks deceptively serene, but never inviting. I am content. Everything I’ve set out to accomplish, to prove to myself and to others, has come true. I’m respected at work, I’m making more money than most Americans my age, White or Black, man or woman, and everything is looking up. No one knows I’m the bastard daughter of a whore who died with a syringe dangling from her arm, who was found stuffed between a couple of garbage cans like a broken doll for the trash collectors to find. There’s no reason for them to know.

  Nor do they know about my dreams. The bad ones about the things in the dark with the red glowing eyes and the razor-sharp teeth that watch me as I lie helpless in my crib. The dreams get so bad they intrude on my work. So I do what any other self- respecting young urban professional would do: I get myself a shrink.

  Dr. Caron comes very highly recommended. His clients number among San Francisco’s political and financial elite. He is handsome, sympathetic, understanding; the kind of psychiatrist a young woman can open her soul to without fear. Dr. Caron tells me there is nothing wrong with turning my back on the squalor and unhappiness of my past, that I need not feel guilty because I am now a part of the system that exploits my old friends and family in my former neighborhood. I owe nothing to anyone, except myself. Soon the dreams go away. But my dependence on Dr. Caron grows. My will seems to dissolve when I’m in his presence. But this does not frighten or worry me. Instead, I feel at peace.