Once again Palmer found himself in the other place he and Sonja shared during their trysts. He walked through a gray space that was neither air nor water, uncertain whether he was flying or swimming. It was warm and comforting, as he imagined the womb to be. Sonja emerged from the gray, as swift and sure as a shark in its element, her hair trailing behind her like jet exhaust. She wrapped herself around Palmer, her arms and legs impossibly long and tapered, looking more like an Impressionistic nude than a flesh-and-blood woman.
He wrapped his own limbs about her, pulling her into himself. Thoughts and emotions jittered between them like static electricity as they merged. This sharing of self and experience, more than anything else, was how they managed to ‘catch up’ with one another after so many months apart. She flowed into him and he into her.
Missed you…
Need you...
Love you...
Worried...
Gone so long...
Love you...
Judd...
Judd?
Suddenly Palmer was plummeting through space as if he had stepped from the lip of a cliff into the deepest, darkest pit in the Carlsbad Cavern. It was as if he was spiraling down into the mouth of hell itself. The transition was so sudden he didn’t even have the time to scream for his life.
He hit hard, but because he was not a physical thing, there were no broken bones. He groaned and got to his feet, surveying his new surroundings. The first thing he felt was the wind, cutting into him like a flaying knife. He was in the middle of a vast arctic ice field. A dark, moon-haunted sky hung overhead. In the far distance, he could make out the humps of vast glacier-bound mountains. As he turned around, shuddering in the frigid wind, he marveled at the frozen desolation surrounding him. There was nothing but an empty tract of ice, gleaming blackly in the moonlight.
Sonja?
His telepathic call echoed across the frozen sea, unanswered.
SONJA!
Nothing moved or waved or responded to his cry.
Exasperated, Palmer struck off in the direction of the full moon on the horizon. He didn’t know why—it simply seemed like the thing to do. He had never gotten lost inside anyone before. At least he assumed the ice-bound tundra was Sonja’s mental construct, not his own. In any case, he would have to rely on his instincts if he wanted to get out of this mess.
The ice was smooth beneath his feet and at least ten feet thick, but he didn’t have any trouble moving across the glasslike surface. He had gone a mile, possibly more before realizing he was being followed. Not by someone walking behind him—but by something travelling below the ice.
At first it looked to be a black, amorphous shadow, gliding beneath the thick layer of ice. Palmer remembered a nature documentary he’d once seen, where a killer whale had stalked a seal sunning itself on an ice floe, and had smashed its way through to snatch the hapless beast and drag it to its death. Struggling to remain calm, he reminded himself that, in reality, he was nowhere near the Arctic Circle, and whatever it was lurking beneath the ice, it most certainly wasn’t a killer whale.
Marshaling his courage, he dropped to his knees, wiping at the fine layer of dry snow covering the ice with numbed hands, peering intently at the thing trapped beneath. Twin fires blinked on underneath the ice, glowing like embers lost from hell’s furnace. Only then did Palmer understand what he’d stumbled across. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but it was too late. The Other knew he was there—and unprotected.
A pair of arms burst through the ice floe, the skin as blue and cold as turquoise. The hands were those of a crone, with hooked cracked nails. They flailed about blindly, seeking purchase on the slippery surface, as The Other pulled itself free of its frozen grave, like a woman wriggling out of a girdle.
After the arms came the head, her hair transformed into a dark sunburst by the rapidly forming icicles. Her eyes burned with an unending anger, and her lips seemed obscenely full, like freshly fed leeches, as they pulled back into a predator’s grin, revealing the teeth of a killing thing. As demonic as The Other’s features were, there was a horrible familiarity about them— like those of a loved one in a picture torn to shreds and pasted back together by inexpert hands.
Look who has come to pay me a visit!
The Other’s voice sounded like a clogged kitchen sink trying to approximate human speech. Palmer felt ill as her cold, hateful venom leaked into his consciousness.
Give me a kiss, lover boy!
He smashed his fist into The Other’s face as hard as he could. Blood the color and consistency of burnt engine oil flew from her nostrils. The Other laughed, sounding like a cross between a lion roaring and a toilet backing up. He hit The Other harder, but all she did was laugh some more.
Suddenly Palmer was back in his own body. He landed two more blows before he realized he was hitting Sonja. Somehow he was astride her, one hand on her throat as while the other punched her again and again. Her sunglasses had fallen off, revealing eyes the color of a dying sun. In the dark, the ichor that passed for her blood almost looked normal.
Palmer stared at his lover’s bruised and swollen face, the damage already disappearing before his stunned eyes. He then looked at his clenched fist. He opened it as if expecting a stinging insect to fly out.
“I’m sorry, Sonja. I don’t know what happened. I was ... I thought I was fighting ...I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She smiled, then—a slow, lazy smile of satiation— and placed a finger on his trembling lips, halting his babbled apology. She pulled him down to her, pressing his face between her breasts. He could not have escaped her embrace, even if he tried.
They lay together for a long time until Palmer finally fell asleep. In his dreams, he heard the groaning of approaching glaciers and the echo of inhuman laughter.
Chapter Nine
They had sex every night following Sonja’s return, often more than once. But the telepathic communion they had once shared was now strained, bordering on the nonexistent. Sonja was always guarded during their trysts, her defenses at the ready. She seemed unwilling to relax, even in the heat of the most intimate of moments. Palmer was uncertain whether it was because she was afraid of the Other getting out, or of him getting in. She had become a blank wall, shrugging off every attempt at psychic rapport. Whatever secrets Sonja kept locked inside herself were hers and hers alone. While this bothered him, Palmer knew better than to press the issue.
But as the telepathic side of their relationship dwindled, the darker side grew. The first time she came to him with the whip, he threw it down. He did not want to play that game. He refused to hurt her. Then she took off her sunglasses and looked at him with those terrible eyes, mutated beyond tears, and something within him broke.
He beat her until the blood flew, stippling the walls and spotting the bare light-bulb hanging over the bed. He beat her until his arms ached and the whip fell from his numbed fingers—all to meet her need. Because she needed his blows—needed them more than his caresses. Palmer did not know what sins Sonja hoped to expiate with these stinging leather kisses, nor did he need to. Some things are sacred, even to monsters.
A week after Sonja came home, Palmer awoke in the middle of the night to find the bed empty. His first thought was of Lethe, and he hurried to the child’s bedroom, but she was sound asleep. Palmer felt a surge of shame. Sonja would no more harm Lethe than he would. He looked out the window at the nearby forest. No doubt she was out hunting. After all, she was nocturnal. As he returned to their room, he saw her crawl in through the window. She was completely nude, her mouth and belly smeared with fresh blood.
“Sonja?”
She hissed at him like a startled cat. Every hair on his body stood on end as he realized what he was looking at wasn’t Sonja, but the demon inside her.
The Other spoke to him then, in a gravelly, slurred baritone, sounding like a remixed, slowed-down version of Sonja’s usual voice. “Why does she keep you around, Palmer?” She laughed, licking the blood
off the back of her hand like a cat cleaning itself. She enjoyed making him twitch.
Palmer was uncertain whether Sonja’s vampire alter ego was a separate identity or only her id given voice. Whether she was genuinely possessed or simply mad, he had to be careful when dealing with the Other. She lacked Sonja’s patience— marginal as that could be, at times—and had made it clear more than once that she suffered Palmer’s presence only as a ‘favor’ to her host.
“I want to talk to Sonja,” he said firmly, as if demanding to speak to the manager at a fast-food joint.
“Tough titty, asshole,” the Other growled, dropping onto the bed. “She ain’t here.”
“Then I’ll wait until she gets back,’ Palmer replied, folding his arms.
“Back off, Renfield!’ the Other snapped, showing her fangs in ritual display.
Suddenly the Other fell silent, and something resembling fear flickered across its face. Palmer glanced over his shoulder at the bedroom door and saw Fido standing on the threshold, his eyes glowing in the dark. By the time he returned his gaze, Sonja was sitting there, frowning at the blood drying on her belly. She swiped a finger along the smear and tasted it, grimacing slightly. “Don’t worry, it’s not human,” she reassured him. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
“You went out hunting, and the Other came back.”
“Did she speak?” Sonja asked cautiously.
“Yeah, but she didn’t say much.”
“About what?”
“It asked me why you keep me around.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t say anything,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “Because I don’t know the answer.”
“That’s not true.”
“Is it?” Palmer knelt beside her on the bed, taking her hands into his. “Sonja, what’s wrong? What happened in New Orleans that you’re not telling me? Whatever it was, you can share it with me.”
She looked into his face, her dark-adapted pupils so dilated they filled her eyes from lid to lid. Suddenly a great sadness pressed against him, wrapping him in stifling grayness. A black depression filled his lungs; crushing the breath from him while his heart first seemed to swell with agony, then wither from misery. Palmer felt himself being sucked into a churning whirlpool of grief that sought to pour itself into him until it ruptured every cell in his body.
Marshaling all his strength, both physical and mental, Palmer punched her as hard as he could. He told himself it wasn’t cruelty: it was self-preservation. The pain retreated from his mind, leaving in its place a red-hot coal of anger, betrayal…and arousal. His orgasm took him by surprise. He hadn’t even touched himself. His fists ached from the pounding they’d administered. His body was still trembling like a plucked guitar string. The walls of the room looked as if someone had tried to clean a dirty paintbrush by flicking it dry. Sonja lay facedown on the bed, her body twisted in sheets smeared with her blood and sweat. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Sonja?”
No response.
He rolled her over. Her body was heavy and limp. Her face was a mess of blood, pulped cartilage and shattered bone. She still wasn’t breathing. Her brain sounded like a radio tuned to an empty channel.
Palmer lurched to his feet, bile rising in his throat, and ran to the bathroom. He locked the door behind him and splashed water on his face. When he looked into the mirror, he found his reflection haggard and drawn, with a mad gleam in its eyes. He recognized the gleam. He’d seen it before, in the eyes of the humans who served Morgan and Pangloss—the ones called ‘Renfields’. That’s what the Other had called him: Renfield.
Palmer pressed his bruised and bleeding hands against his face, trying to blot the sight from his eyes. The screech and squall of a thousand minds pushed against him, threatening to breach his barriers and inundate him with the fears, hopes, dreams, secrets, and sins of the entire world, until he, himself, was completely erased.
“Stop it!” he yelled at an old lady in Poughkeepsie, who couldn’t decide whether or not to put her cancer-ridden poodle down. “Get out of my head!” He screeched at an aging businessman in Taipei worried about his waning potency. “Leave me alone!” he bellowed at a member of the Taliban in Kabul, who was fearful he was being followed by a team of Navy Seals.
He jerked open the bathroom door. Sonja was standing on the other side, her cheekbones already restructured back to normal. Her lips had deflated, and the bruises covering her eyes were quickly fading from black to blue to yellow.
He had failed her. He would always fail her. How could he hope to satisfy the death-wish of a woman who healed within minutes?
Later, as he laid there beside her on the bloodstained bed, watching the dawn chase the shadows across the walls of their room, he wondered which was worse: thinking that he’d killed her, or being disappointed to discover she was still alive.
Chapter Ten
Palmer was building yet another shipping crate when Lethe came out onto the patio to watch him. She was carrying the black mask he’d kept from the previous shipment.
“Where’s Auntie Boo?”
“Auntie Boo’s sleeping. You know she sleeps during the day.”
“Not all the time,” Lethe said, with just a touch of petulance.
“You’re right. Sometimes she’s awake during the day. But only under special circumstances.”
Lethe held up the mask so that it covered her face. Her eyes, golden and pupil-less, shone in the empty sockets. It made Palmer’s flesh creep.
“Put that thing away!” he snapped.
Lethe flinched at the unexpected sharpness in his voice, and Palmer inwardly cursed himself. He was about to tell Lethe he was sorry, when she turned and ran back inside the house. It was then that he noticed Fido standing in the doorway, staring at him with the same golden gaze as Lethe’s.
“Well, I screwed the pooch that time, didn’t I?” Palmer grunted as he set aside his tools and massaged the back of his neck. “I’m letting this shit with Sonja get the better of me. I shouldn’t take it out on the kid.” Palmer shook his head and grimaced in disgust. “Jesus! I must be crazier than I thought! I’m telling my woman trouble to one of the seraphim!”
Lethe peered out the window that faced the courtyard. Daddy was talking to Fido and looking sad. Lethe knew Daddy didn’t want to be mean to her. But Lethe’s feelings were still hurt. She looked down at the black mask she held in her hands, the empty eyes and mouth turned towards her as if patiently awaiting an answer.
Sighing to herself, Lethe placed the mask on Daddy’s worktable, where she first found it. She wondered what she would do to pass the day. She was tired of playing by herself, and she’d read all her books so many times she had lost interest in them. Daddy tried hard to keep her library stocked, but she’d long outgrown The Little House On The Prairie, Oz, and Treasure Island. Even David Copperfield and Huckleberry Finn were no longer challenging to read.
She wished Daddy would let her go into town with him. She really wanted to see other children, other people, and other places. She watched these things on the video player, but that wasn’t the same thing as experiencing them for her self. All her life—or at least as far back as she could remember— Daddy had kept her away from what he called “normal people”. Daddy and Auntie Blue both agreed that “normal people” would not understand her. They told her that she was different, and that “normal people’ didn’t like things that were “different”. They told her the “normal people” would look at her eyes and get scared. They were also afraid the Bad Man would find her and take her away and put her in some horrible. The Bad Man had done something to hurt Auntie Blue, a long time ago, and killed her real mommy and daddy, back when she was really little.
Lethe couldn’t remember much of what happened back then. What memories she did have were that of hunger or being wet—baby stuff. Sometimes she remembered her mother, Anise, although all she could recall was a warm, dark figure who smelled of milk. Once Lethe
had asked Auntie Blue if Anise was her sister and Auntie Blue had replied that they had the same father. Lethe couldn’t remember her biological father at all, but she knew his name was Fell. The first time she’d been told that Daddy wasn’t really her flesh-and-blood father she’d burst into tears and clutched his pant legs, terrified that she was going to be taken away. But that was twenty months ago, back when she was still a little kid and didn’t know any better.
But now she was growing up— faster than Daddy or Auntie Blue even realized. The only one who knew that Lethe’s childhood was nearing its end was Fido. Fido talked to her at night while she was asleep. He didn’t talk with his mouth, but he didn’t talk with his head, either, the way Daddy and Auntie Blue did. It was more like Fido felt things to her.
Fido was as important as Daddy, even though he didn’t fix peanut-butter and banana sandwiches or read Dr Seuss to her, because it was Fido’s job to make sure she was safe. It was his presence that kept the Bad Man from finding her. Fido was there to make sure she grew up, so she could fulfill her destiny. (Fido used the word ‘destiny’ a lot.)
Even now, as she thought of him, Fido lumbered into view. He was big, bulky and shaggy, like a Saint Bernard in human form, wrapped in filthy cast-off sweaters with newspapers stuffed in his boots. Daddy said Fido looked like a homeless person, which confused Lethe because Fido lived in their house. She knew from her contact with Fido that it took a lot of energy to maintain his physical form and that he would be a lot happier if he could go around without his body slowing him down, but it was important for him to stay manifested on the physical plane for as long as she required protection, which wouldn’t be much longer now.
Fido was excited by the prospect of being able to rejoin his brother-sisters, but part of him was sad, too because this meant Lethe was growing up and wouldn’t need him anymore. Lethe tried to cheer him up and told him she’d always need him, but they both knew that wasn’t true.
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