Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  Pretty soon she wouldn’t be able to turn to Daddy for help, or rely on Fido for protection. Her success or failure was totally up to her, and nobody else. A part of her cringed at the thought of dealing with so much responsibility. But, at the same time, it also meant she would finally be free to see the world and everything in it, firsthand. She could go to town if she wanted—or anywhere else. Thinking about it made her scared and excited all at once, mixing her up inside. Growing up was scary, but then everything really important is kind of scary.

  Lethe padded down the hall to the bedroom Daddy shared with Auntie Blue. The door was shut but not locked, so Lethe was able to get in. The room was very dark and stiflingly hot. No human could possibly sleep in such a sweatbox, but Auntie Blue lay on the bed, covered by a sheet.

  Lethe moved to the bed while Fido hung back. Auntie Blue lay cold, white, and silent on the bed. She wasn’t wearing any clothes under the sheet. She wasn’t breathing, and she wasn’t sweating, although the room’s temperature was over ninety degrees. There was blood smeared on the pillowcases and sheets and the room smelled like stinky socks. Lethe looked back at Fido, who shuffled back and forth at the threshold.

  “Its okay, Fido. The Other’s asleep, too.”

  Auntie Blue didn’t like Fido. She said he made her nervous, but what she really meant was that he made the Other nervous. Lethe had sent Fido to scare the Other away the night before because she knew it wanted to hurt Daddy. Auntie Blue loved Daddy, but sometimes she had a real hard time controlling the Other. Lethe gently brushed aside a lock of dark hair from her godmother’s forehead and kissed her brow. Sonja’s skin was cool and dry under her lips.

  “Bye, Auntie Blue,” she whispered. “Thanks for helping me get born.”

  Palmer fixed Lethe’s favorite meal as a peace offering and went to her room to tell her to wash up, assuming she was either playing with her dolls or reading books to Fido.

  “Time for dinner! I made pigs-in-a-blanket.”

  Fido looked up from his guard post at the foot of Lethe’s bed, his eyes unreadable as ever. Palmer’s eyes went automatically to the jumble of dolls and stuffed animals, but there was no sign of Lethe. In the space where she normally slept was what looked like a sleeping bag made of semi-opaque yellow plastic.

  “What the—?” Palmer stepped forward, frowning. Maybe it was something Sonja had brought back for Lethe from New Orleans—? As he got closer, he could tell that whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t a sleeping bag. At five feet long and two feet wide, the thing seemed to pulse like a vein, and he could see the outline of a small, slender body hanging suspended at its amber core.

  “Lethe!”

  Palmer lunged at the cocoon, determined to tear it open with his bare hands and yank his daughter free. However, the moment his fingers made contact with the outer casing a surge of psychic energy, as painful as it was powerful, shot up his arms and into his brain, hurling him back as if he’d just tried to scale an electric fence.

  As Palmer shook his head in an attempt to clear it, Fido moved to stand between him and the bed. The seraph’s arms were outspread, his chin lowered in what Palmer recognized as a protective stance.

  “Damn you! Stand aside!” Palmer snapped as he got to his feet.

  Fido did not offer to move.

  “I’ve got to help her!”

  This time Fido wavered for a second, then lowered his arms.

  Palmer stepped toward the bed again. This time the blast kicked him out of the bedroom and into the hall. He could feel blood running from his nostrils, and his ears rang as if he was on top of an air-raid siren. As he lay there on the floor, the door to Lethe’s bedroom closed of its own accord.

  He staggered down the hall, propping his shoulder against the wall to keep from falling. Upon reaching his room, he found Sonja still asleep. Her skin felt dry and cool under his hands, like that of a reptile.

  “Sonja!” he barked.

  She moved sluggishly, brushing at him with her left hand as if he was a bothersome insect intruding on her sleep. She mumbled something under her breath, and then rolled over, pulling the sheet over her head. Palmer took a deep breath and stepped back from the bed and focused his thoughts.

  Sonja!

  The telepathic bolt bowed her body as if juiced by a car battery. Sonja’s eyes flew open, and she sat up like a knife blade, the hair on her head erect and crackling like static on a radio. As he reached out to touch her naked shoulder, she drew back and hissed at him.

  “Wake up—it’s just me!” he shouted.

  She blinked and lifted a hand to her brow. “Something’s happened to Lethe,” Sonja said as she slid out of the bed and began pulling on her clothes.

  “How did you know?” Palmer asked.

  “I had a dream she told me goodbye,” she replied grimly.

  Sonja followed him to Lethe’s room, listening intently as Palmer recounted what had happened earlier.” Fido would never let anything hurt Lethe,” she said. “So whatever you were trying to do was dangerous to her.”

  “Dangerous?” Palmer snorted derisively. “I was trying to get her out of that—that thing!”

  Sonja gave Palmer a hard look. “Just shut up and let me handle this, okay?”

  The door to Lethe’s room opened effortlessly when Sonja tried the handle. She stepped inside, Palmer following close behind her. Fido was still standing guard, shuffling from one foot to the other, watching them intently with his golden eyes. Sonja held up her hands, palms outward. Being in such close proximity to the seraph was actively unpleasant for her—like being dipped in honey and placed on top of an anthill.

  “We don’t want to hurt Lethe, Fido. We know you won’t allow that. We’re not going to do anything, Fido.”

  “Like hell we aren’t!” Palmer snapped.

  “Don’t mind him, Fido,” Sonja said quickly. “Palmer’s just scared. He thinks something bad has happened, and he just wants to help Lethe.”

  The seraph continued rocking back and forth, its head wavering like that of a Parkinson’s patient. Sonja turned back to Palmer and grabbed him by the elbow, squeezing it until he grimaced.

  “Bill, I want you to promise me that you won’t try and touch Lethe. You got off lucky the first two times, but if you try it again Fido will fry your brain like bacon, do you understand me?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered sullenly. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”

  Sonja turned back to Fido. “We just want to look at her. That’s all. We’re not going to interfere.”

  The seraph slowly moved aside, allowing them an unimpeded view of what lay on Lethe’s bed. The thing was six feet long and three feet wide and seemed to be made from translucent amber. It was filled with a thick fluid-like substance that radiated a diffuse, bio-luminescence, like that of a glowworm. She could glimpse Lethe’s body hanging suspended within.

  “It’s getting bigger,” Palmer muttered. “It wasn’t this large when I first found it... Whatever it is.”

  “It looks like a cocoon.”

  “What the hell is she doing in a fucking cocoon?”

  “Undergoing some sort of metamorphosis—that’s what cocoons are for.”

  “For the love of God, Sonja, aren’t you going to do something?” Palmer shouted. “That’s our little girl in there!”

  As he lunged for the thing on the bed, Fido moved to block his path and the sound of psychic dynamos gearing up filled the room. Swearing under her breath, Sonja grabbed Palmer and tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry, slamming the door shut behind her on the way out. She stomped into the kitchen and dropped him into one of the chairs. Palmer was so angry he was choking on his words, but she could hear what he was thinking.

  “You can call me a cold-blooded bitch all you want, William Palmer,” she snapped. “But I just saved you from having your brains scrambled! If Fido let you have it, you’d be shitting in diapers and eating through tubes for the rest of your life!”

  “I realize
that, Sonja,” Palmer said as the rage drained from his face and mind. “I’m sorry I thought those things at you, but you can’t expect me to stand by and do nothing!”

  “That’s exactly what I expect you to do,” she replied sternly. “Bill, you’ve known from the start that Lethe isn’t a human child. Hell, you were there when she was born.”

  “Don’t remind me,’ he “mumbled, massaging his calf. “I still have scars from where that mutant hell-twin of hers tried to chew off my leg.”

  “Lethe was born of two dhampires like me, with the express purpose of breeding a race of living vampires. At first I thought she was a form of seraphim, but now I’m not so sure. Whatever she is, the seraphim consider her important enough to be placed under their protection. And for all we know, this cocoon is perfectly natural. The fact Fido won’t let us touch it suggests this larval stage is necessary.”

  Palmer shook his head and got up to retrieve the bottle of tequila from the pantry. Sonja was surprised by how old he looked. The psychokinetic pummeling he’d recently taken didn’t help matters, either. His face was puffy, and bruises were beginning to blossom under his eyes as if he’d been struck by an automobile air-bag. His dark hair and goatee were now liberally shot with gray, and his nose was beginning to dominate his face. He had changed dramatically over the last couple of years, what with his fascination with Mayan body modification, and now he was starting to age. Funny that she hadn’t noticed that before. Was this how it was with vampires and their human lovers? One day they’re handsome, the next they’re old and withered? She had to struggle to remember his age. Forty-three? Forty-four? How old was that in terms of how humans age? And, without realizing it, she began to think of Judd. About his youth, his innocence, and his humanity...

  She abruptly reined in her thoughts in, slamming them behind a protective wall. She looked at Palmer, who was sitting there at the kitchen table, the tequila bottle at his elbow, staring at eyes as distant and unreadable as a dead man’s.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sonja woke up as the sun went down. She showered immediately, making sure to wash away the previous evening’s dried blood, and then wrapped her clean body in a kimono she had picked up in Tokyo. Upon going to check on Lethe’s cocoon she found that it was no longer resting on the child’s bed but was now out on the patio. Fido was still standing guard, regardless of its location.

  Palmer was in the kitchen, drinking tequila. In the three days since Lethe retreated into the cocoon, Sonja had yet to see him do anything but drink. It was possible he ate while she was asleep, but she doubted it.

  “Who moved that thing onto the patio?”

  “I wasn’t me,” Palmer slurred as he tilted back the bottle. He wasn’t even bothering with the rituals of salt and lime anymore. “All I know is that when I woke up today, it was sittin’ out there. Guess Fido moved it while I wasn’t looking.” Palmer set aside the bottle and began pawing through the pile of mail and invoices on the kitchen table. “By the way, you got a letter…”

  “A letter? Here?” Sonja stiffened. “Addressed to me?’

  “There’s no return address, but it was mailed from the States. It’s got a New York City postmark. Cooper Station, to be exact,” Palmer said as he handed her the envelope addressed to ‘Sonja Blue c/o Indigo Imports’. She smiled despite herself; pickled in tequila or not, he was still a private eye.

  The stationery itself was nondescript, the address typed, not printed. That in and of itself, in the age of computer-printed mailing labels was unusual. There was no way to tell who— or what—had tracked her down. Was it a friend or foe? The only way for her to find out was to open it. Inside the envelope was a folded sheet of printer paper. It was a photocopy of an article from the Times. The headline read: ‘Wife of Industrialist Thorne Suffers Stroke.’

  “What’s it say?” Palmer asked as he took another slug from the bottle.

  “That my mother’s dying,” she replied quietly.

  “You’re not really going, are you?” Palmer asked in disbelief as he watched from the door of the bedroom. He was one step from sloppy drunk. His sense of betrayal wrapped itself around Sonja like a mildewed towel.

  “Of course I’m going! What the hell does it look like?” she snapped, shoving a pair of leopard-skin bikini briefs, a black lace camisole, and a Revolting Cocks T-shirt into her flight bag. She knew she should feel bad for leaving him alone with Lethe—or rather, Lethe’s cocoon— but was, instead, getting angry at him. Then again, she always got mad when people tried to make her feel guilty. She did enough of that on her own; she didn’t need the extra help.

  She went to the wall safe and retrieved the special strongbox where she kept her collection of passports and credit cards. She dumped them onto the bed, rummaging through them for an appropriate alias. She decided to use Sophia Cyan this time out.

  “But what about Lethe?” Palmer protested. “You can’t just leave her like this!”

  “I can’t do anything for her while she’s in there. What the hell difference does it make if I’m actually here or not?”

  “Please. Don’t go. I need you to stay. I’m begging you.”

  The pleading in his voice made Sonja turn around. Palmer hadn’t shaved since Lethe became cocooned, nor has he bathed—or even changed his clothes. With his earplugs, tattoos, and nose piercings, he looked like a demented Humphrey Bogart from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and weakness radiated from him like carbon monoxide fumes from a busted muffler.

  She quickly turned away for fear of him sensing the disgust welling up inside her. She knew, then, that she could not stay there any longer: for it is in the vampire’s nature to exploit—and eventually destroy—those weaker than themselves.

  “Jesus, Sonja,” he whispered, brushing drunkenly at the tears in his eyes. “What’s happening to us?”

  She paused for a moment, searching for something to say. Part of her wanted to take him in her arms and comfort him, but another, darker part wanted to tear his throat out. So, instead of answering him she simply stuffed the last of her gear into her carry-on and zipped it shut.

  And she left them both behind, just like that.

  She wasn’t proud of using Shirley Thorne’s illness to escape an uncomfortable situation at home. Things weren’t merely broken between her and Palmer, they were smashed beyond repair. She had been trying to figure a way out of the situation since returning from New Orleans. Lethe’s metamorphosis had merely accelerated the process—or, so she told herself.

  She had developed the ability, over the years, to emotionally cut herself off from people she cared about—or thought she had cared about. She could dismiss it as a side-effect of her being a vampire, but she knew better.

  Monsters don’t have a lock on cruelty.

  She always flew first class when she had to travel by air. It guaranteed a certain amount of privacy, and if the flight attendants noticed that she never ate while on board, they kept it to themselves. As she settled in for the flight, she ordered a glass of red wine, as camouflage, in order to fit in with the rest of the travelers in the cabin. When her drink arrived, it was served in actual stemware instead of the crappy plastic cups doled out in economy class.

  As she watched the clouds slide by her window, she tried to find a memory of her mother. She cast her mind back, to the life before her own…back before Palmer…before Chaz…before Ghilardi and Pangloss...before Morgan and his terrifying, blood-red kisses…

  Suddenly she is standing in a backyard. The sun is out, and it is a beautiful afternoon. There are balloons and brightly colored crepe-paper streamers and other children running around, dressed in party clothes. She’s wearing a pink dress with lots of ruffles and petticoats. There’s a man dressed like a clown walking around making Wiener dogs and bunnies out of balloons. Another man dressed in overalls and a cowboy hat leads a pony around in a circle for the older kids to ride. Everyone’s wearing silly cardboard hats and carrying party-favor noisemakers. Everyone’s smiling and p
ointing behind her. So she turns around and sees her mother standing on the back porch holding a big cake covered in pink icing with big marzipan roses. Her mother is smiling and looks so happy and beautiful. Everyone starts singing “Happy Birthday” as she carries the cake to the picnic table. Her mother says ‘Make a wish, Denise’ and she has to stand up on the picnic bench to blow out the candles…

  “Ma’am, are you all right?”

  Sonja looked up at the flight attendant, too stunned by the weight of the memory she had unearthed to do more than grunt.

  “Are you hurt?” the stewardess asked again in the tone of voice reserved for those drunk, stoned, or stupid.

  Sonja glanced down at her hand, which was now a fist full of shattered glass and cabernet. She can tell that the flight attendant is becoming uneasy. The last thing she needs is to be watched like a hawk the rest of the trip.

  “There must have been a flaw in the glass,” Sonja suggested while at the same time giving the flight attendant’s mind a small but firm push. “The change in cabin pressure must have caused it to shatter. I’m lucky I didn’t get cut.”

  “You’re really lucky, Ms. Cyan,” the flight attendant clucked as she took away the remains of Sonja glass. “The change in cabin pressure must have caused it to break. You could have cut yourself.”

  “Yeah,” Sonja muttered, moving her hand in order to hide the gaping, bloodless slice across her palm. “Lucky me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was daylight by the time her flight arrived. The flight from Merida had taken fifteen hours, with a two hour layover in Mexico City, and a five hour in Chicago. She could stay active during the day, but it made her slower and more vulnerable to attack. Although her body craved the regenerative coma that passed for sleep among her kind, which was necessary to repair physical damage, at least she didn’t have to worry about contracting immediate and lethal skin cancer from being exposed to the sun’s rays and bursting into flame. At least, not yet.

  As she picked up her rental car at the desk in the terminal she had to fight the instinct to unlock its trunk and crawl inside. Instead, she climbed behind the wheel and drove into the city Denise Thorne had once called home…four decades ago. As she passed through the industrial sector that separated the suburbs from the urban center, she passed the Thorne Complex, which was even bigger than before. She had to hand it to the old man: he always knew how to make a buck and a half.