“Fell said that you had been kidnapped, is that true?”
“In its way,” Howell replied with a shrug. “I came here of my own free will, but when I realized what I was mixed up with, I discovered I could no longer leave. I’ve been trapped here for years, just like the ghosts you saw wandering about the lower floors. I mean to see the undead bastard broken and ground to paste, just like as he destroyed my career. And best of all, I’ve managed to do it under his very nose without him suspecting a thing. He and his despicable little skull-peepers find my thoughts opaque, you see,” the geneticist laughed, tapping his over-sized cranium. “I confuse them by thinking in terms of formulae, and riding the white tiger. Surrounded by a nest of telepaths, I have succeeded in keeping my thoughts to myself for over five years!”
“But why were you working for him in the first place?”
“I am Dr. Brainerd Howell. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Uh, well, I...”
“Well, does it?”
“No,” he admitted.
“And why should it?!” Howell said angrily. “For years I’ve been kept locked away from my fellow scientists, unable to communicate my discoveries as I struggled to discover a means of scientifically replicating the effects of a vampire’s bite on a human. I have succeeded in working the darkest of miracles, melding the world of science with the world of the paranormal—and there is no one to see it! No one to nominate me for a Nobel prize! No one to make sure my name goes down in the history books along with Pasteur! Einstein! Salk!”
“You left out Frankenstein, Mengele and Benway,” Palmer added.
“Don’t get smart with me!” Howell snapped, his pupils contracted down into pinpricks as he jabbed a finger in Palmer’s face. “I could stick you with a hypo full of miracle juice that would make your amino acids square dance. ‘Swing your partner! Do-si-do! He’s got three eyes and no more nose!’ How’d you like that, Mr. Mr. Private Detective?”
“Calm down, Doc! I didn’t mean anything by it! Honest!”
“It took five hundred experimental subjects before I finally perfected the serum that produced Anise and Fell. Even then, the failure rate was eighty percent.”
“You sound real calm about that.”
“Do I?” Howell sighed, rolling up the sleeve of his coat, exposing a pale, surprisingly hairy arm. The inside of his left elbow looked like a pincushion. He took a small plastic bag of white powder from his breast pocket and mixed it with distilled water in a beaker suspended over a flickering Bunsen burner. “Appearances can be deceiving, Mr. Palmer,” he murmured as he wrapped a length of rubber tubing above his elbow. “Very much so.”
Sonja scanned the main floor only to have it come up empty of Renfield activity. By her count, all but one of the psychics had been disposed of, one way or another. That left Nasakenai, the one Fell claimed was Morgan’s heavy gun. High-caliber Renfields weren’t easy to come by, and Morgan sure as hell wouldn’t waste one by marching him into a meat grinder like the Ghost Trap.
She glanced over her shoulder at Fell, who drifted behind her, staring at the sections of the house he had never been allowed to enter. Outside of the three interconnected rooms that had served as Anise and Fell’s bridal suite, the main floor so far seemed to consist of a retrofitted country kitchen, several large, disused parlors full of dusty Victorian love seats and moth-eaten taxidermy foxes, and what had once been a conservatory before the glass window panes had been bricked in.
As they reached the foot of the staircase that led to the second and third floors, Sonja paused to lean on the banister, peering up into the shadows of the next landing. “Do you have any idea what’s up there?” she asked.
Fell nodded. “Dr. Howell’s laboratory and Morgan’s library study are on the second floor. I’m not sure what else is up there. The Renfields kept their quarters on the third floor…” He frowned and fell silent, as if listening to distant music. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Someone just called my name. It sounded like…” He shook his head. “No, that’s impossible.” He started a second time. “There it goes again!”
Sonja scowled and shook her head. “Kid, I don’t hear a damned thing.”
“Oh my God, it’s her!” Fell gasped, trembling like a foal. “It’s Anise!”
“Kid! Listen me to me!” Sonja said, grabbing his arm. “It’s a trick! Anise is dead! s Morgan’s playing a trick on you!”
“You don’t know that!” Fell retorted, jerking himself free of her grip. “You said so yourself that she was alive when you left the motel! How do you know she’s dead? Were you there? Did you see her die?”
“No, but-”
“Then how can you be so sure she’s dead?” He turned and looked toward the darkness at the top of the stairs. “Anise! Is that you, darling?” he called out. He smiled and turned Sonja, a jubilant smile on his face. “You heard her that time, didn’t you?” he asked excitedly. “She’s alive, Sonja! Alive!”
As he began to head up the stairs, Sonja reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, doing her best to hold him back. “Fell, no! Don’t!” she begged. “That’s not Anise you’re hearing! It can’t be!”
Fell spun about, fangs bared and eyes glinting red, and punched her in the jaw. She counted ten risers before the back of her head made contact with the flagstones at the foot of the stairs, turning everything black.
“Anise? Anise, where are you?” Fell called out. When she answered, her voice was so close it was as if she was whispering in his ear.
I’m upstairs, dearest. Waiting for you.
“Are you all right?” Fell asked anxiously as he climbed the stairs that separated him from his love. “Sonja said you were dead. So did Morgan.”
I’m fine, sweet one. I’ve missed you so! I’m sorry about all those nasty things I said the last time we were together! I just wasn’t myself. That evil woman filled my head with all kinds of horrid nonsense. I was such a naughty girl to believe her!
Fell stood at the top of the second-floor stairs, looking around for some sign of her. “Where are you, darling?”
In the library, silly. Where else?
As she spoke the words in his head, the door to Morgan’s study swung open.
“Is it safe?” he asked nervously.
We have nothing to fear from him, Fell. He’s leaving us alone. We’ll never have to worry about him again.
Fell didn’t bother to question his luck. It was enough that his lover had returned to him and Morgan had fled. He hurried into the darkened library.
“Anise?”
She was standing in front of library’s huge fireplace, watching him with a coy, teasing smile on her lips. Her figure had returned to the trim proportions it had possessed before the pregnancy. She was beautiful and sexy and, best of all, she was alive. Anise held out her arms to him and Fell threw himself into her embrace.
“Thank God, it wasn’t true!” he exclaimed. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” But as he stepped back to feast his eyes on his beloved’s face, he found Nasakenai, the right half of his head swaddled in fresh bandages, returning his gaze. He backed away from the smirking Renfield, shaking his head in denial. “No! She’s alive! I heard her call my name!”
“You heard what you wanted to hear,” Morgan said. “You are still human in that regard!”
Fell turned to stare at the figure seated at the massive desk. Morgan, dressed in immaculate evening wear, leaned forward, resting his chin on his steepled fingers as he smiled at his former patient. “Behold, the errant son returns! Welcome home, my dear boy.”
“Fuck you, ‘Father’!” Fell snarled.
The vampire lord lifted an elegantly arched eyebrow as he clucked his tongue. “I see you’ve been exposed to the same corrosive influence as poor Anise. One night away from home and you’re already falling in with a bad crowd.”
“You used me, Morgan!” Fell said angrily. “I came to you for help and you fuckin’ used me as
a guinea pig! You looked inside me and took out things that had no right being outside my head so I would fit into your Dracula über alles ego trip!”
Morgan tilted back in his chair, studying Fell with a detached interest, just like he used to during their therapy sessions.
Sonja had warned Fell about going up alone against the vampire lord, but the hate he felt for Morgan swelled inside him like a storm. It felt like he’d downed an amphetamine cocktail with an adrenalin chaser. He was immortal and invulnerable, a child of the night to be feared by all that dared cross his path.
“No one fucks with me and gets away with it! I’m going to flay you alive, old man!” he snarled, thrusting out his chin in defiance.
“Go ahead and take your best shot,” Morgan said as he stepped out from behind the desk in one smooth, seamless motion, his arms held away from his sides. “Be my guest.”
Fell snatched up an obsidian letter opener lying on the desk and moved forward, ready to plunge the knife into the vampire’s eyes. As he lifted the blade, his eyes met Morgan’s and the room began to spin around as if it had suddenly become a centrifuge. He cried out in pain as an unseen hand forced his fingers to peel away from the hilt of the letter opener. The obsidian knife dropped to the carpet at Fell’s feet with a muffled thud.
“What’s the matter, Fell? Got a cramp?”Morgan chuckled darkly.
The younger vampire snarled and averted his eyes from his Maker’s taunting smirk.
“Look at me when I speak to you, boy!” the vampire lord snarled. “I said look at me!”
Fell cried out as invisible fingers yanked at his neck, forcing him to meet Morgan’s wine-dark gaze.
“Now show me whose boss,” he sneered.
Fell promptly dropped to the floor as if hamstringed, laying on his back, belly exposed, like a cub submitting to the dominant male in a wolf pack. A thin, nasal whine escaped his constricted throat as he pissed himself.
“Ah, the recklessness of youth!” Morgan proclaimed as he knelt beside Fell’s writhing body, caressing his hairless cheek with the ball of his thumb. “Ready to snap the leash and bound, unhindered, into the world! Is that what you want, child? Freedom?”
Fell tried to answer, but all that came from his mouth was a bubble of bloody froth.
“Yes, I can see it in your eyes. You’re still human enough to believe in such garbage, I fear. And it’s contaminated you beyond redemption.” Morgan said sadly. “What is freedom but the chance to die at the hands of those who fear you? If you went to the zoo and threw open the door of the tiger’s cage, would it leap free of its prison and run wild in the streets, snacking on infants snatched from their strollers, or would it simply yawn and go back to sleep, the concept of freedom meaningless to it?” Morgan leaned forward and kissed Fell’s sweaty brow gently, like a father bidding his young son good night. “You should have stayed in the cage, Fell,” he murmured. “You are no longer of use to me. Pity. You showed such promise in therapy.”
Morgan picked up the letter opener Fell had dropped, running his thumb down the length of its obsidian blade, watching the blood boil forth like brackish water. His thumb sealed itself before the thick, foul smelling liquid had time to stain the carpet.
“Give me your hand.” The command was quiet, almost gentle.
Fell gritted his teeth and tried to keep from obeying. Although his muscles groaned like rotten mooring ropes, in the end there was no escaping the vampire lord’s will. Morgan placed the letter opener in Fell’s rigid, trembling hand, and then wrapped his fingers around its hilt.
“You know what to do,” he whispered.
Fell ground his teeth, heedless of the blood filling his mouth as his fangs shredded his lower lip. He tried to twist his head away from the slowly approaching blade, but it was no use. His body was no longer his to control. He tried screamed, but all that escaped his paralyzed larynx was a high-pitched whine. As the point of the letter opener punctured his right eye like an overripe grape, he managed a short, muffled shout of pain. Then, to his horror, his other hand rose of its own volition and took the weapon from his bloodstained right hand and plunged it into his remaining eye, plunging him into total darkness. Then he felt the sharp edge of the blade begin to saw into his exposed throat. He continued trying to scream even after he’d severed his own larynx.
As he felt death close about him, Fell’s thoughts turned one last time to those he had loved most: his parents, his sister, Anise, and his daughter.
“What is this?” Suddenly Morgan was straddling his body, slapping the letter opener from Fell’s grip. “There is a child?” He grabbed Fell by his bloodied shirt front, trying not to shake him so hard his head finally fell off. “The bitch tricked me! The child isn’t dead! Tell me where! Tell me!”
Fell opened his mouth, but all that came out was a large, black bubble of blood. He could feel Morgan rooting inside his dying brain, searching for the memories concerning the baby’s whereabouts. Blind and partially paralyzed, it was like being alone in a dark house with a rabid, hungry animal.
“Tell me where it is, breeder, or I swear I’ll keep you alive like this forever!” Morgan spat.
Fell knew he had waltzed into Morgan’s trap like the world’s biggest fool. He’d gotten a taste of being superhuman and it had made him reckless, and now he was paying for his carelessness. He was dying, but he’d be doubly damned if he’d betray his daughter to this monster. But he also knew Morgan was stronger than him, both physically and mentally, and accustomed to getting what he wanted. So he grabbed a fistful of his own hair and give it one good, final yank.
Morgan yowled in rage as Fell’s head came free of its body, rolling onto the Persian carpet. He let go of the body, kicking it a few times in frustration. Nasakenai stood off to the side, watched his master nervously.
“Send the pyrotic after Howell!” he commanded. “Once I’m done with the good doctor, it can use his body as its new host.”
“Very well, milord,” Nasakenai said, bowing in acknowledgement. “And what of the rogue?”
“She’s mine.”
Sonja sat up and rubbed the back of her head. Her fingers came away sticky. She grunted and wiped her hand on her jacket. Fell was stronger than she’d suspected.
She got to her feet, leaning heavily on the banister. Bouquets of fireworks exploded behind her eyelids. Had she been human, the fall she’d just taken would have killed her. She had to find Fell. Make sure he was all right. What did the young fool think he was doing, running off like that?
“Fell!” Her voice sounded weak to her own ears, like that of an old woman. “Where are you?”
She fell silent upon hearing a footfall at the top of the landing. She looked up and saw Fell lurch into sight, his tread heavy and unsteady. His clothes were so coated with blood it looked as if someone had doused him with a five-gallon can of paint. In his stiffening right arm he held his own severed, eyeless head by its long, yellow hair.
Fell’s dead fingers spasmed as his animated corpse went limp and collapsed upon the upper landing, sending his head bouncing down the stairs, until it came to rest at Sonja’s feet, staring up at her with its ruined sockets.
From the darkness on the second floor came the sound of laughter. She knew that laugh. She’d last heard it in London, back when she was human.
“I’m coming for you, bastard!” she whispered under her breath, her hand closing about switchblade in her pocket.
She is here, and my hands shake in anticipation. Her aura precedes her, lighting her way like foxfire. That I could have succeeded by accident where my carefully laid plans failed so horribly is both fascinating and humbling. I must destroy this, my most magnificent creation, for her very existence is a threat to my continuance. Yet I cannot help but stand in awe of her—worship her, as Pygmalion adored his Galatea. She is here, and my hands burn for her blood.
Palmer pressed his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the things eeling in and out of his field of vision. They looked s
omething like centipedes, except that they were transparent and swam about in midair. If Howell saw them, he didn’t seem to mind; he was too busy checking his syringe for air bubbles to worry about the extra-dimensional creatures in the rafters.
“Look, Doc—if you want to get away from Morgan, I’m sure my friend Sonja will be more than happy to help you out...”
“My dear Mr. Palmer,” Howell sighed around the hypodermic he held clenched between his teeth as he slapped the inside of his elbow with his index and middle fingers in hopes of raising a vein. “I have spent over five years in the grip of one vampire. What makes you think I’d want to hand myself over to yet another one?”
“Sonja’s nothing like Morgan,” Palmer hastened to assure him.
“And rattlesnakes are nothing like Gila monsters,” Howell replied as he deftly jabbed the loaded hypo into his arm. Watching Howell shoot up made Palmer want a cigarette. He winced and averted his gaze.
Howell smiled wryly. “Go ahead and look away. I don’t mind. Mainlining isn’t a pretty sight, not even to junkies. You could jump me right now. Why don’t you?”
Palmer shrugged. “I don’t know,” he answered. It was the truth.
Howell quickly untied the rubber tubing and flexed his elbow a few times. He turned to face Palmer, his eyes dilating as the heroin rushed through his bloodstream. It suddenly occurred to Palmer that, despite his aged appearance, Howell was only a couple of years older than himself.
I’m not proud of the things I have done in Morgan’s service. But it’s too late to pretend they didn’t happen or that I had no choice in the matter,” Howell said as he removed the Luger from his pocket. Palmer tensed. The guy was a loon and a junkie to boot. There was no telling what he might decide to do. “I must admit that the work challenged me, unlike anything else I’ve ever encountered. I dug my grave years ago, Mr. Palmer. I am a dead man. The only question is when my heart will stop beating,” he handed the pistol back to Palmer, butt first. “I do not expect to live terribly much longer. In fact, I’d be surprised if I survive to see the dawn. But I warn you, do not trust your champion simply because she is a woman. The females are even worse than the males.”
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