Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  “All the more reason for me not to trust you, then,” Sonja said. “At least Renfields do not have much control in what they do, being addicts and all. You, on the other hand, are one of their bellwethers. You lure fellow humans to their doom in order to line your own pockets!”

  “I am not a Renfield, nor am I a bellwether,” Jen said stiffly, his eyes flashing blue fire. “I am like you.”

  “Don’t make me laugh—or slap you,” she responded with a derisive laugh. “You and I are nothing alike.”

  “Perhaps. But you have still misjudged me, milady. I am not human; I am dhampir.”

  Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I’ve heard stories of such things—the supposed by-product of vampire-human mating.”

  “There are very few of my kind in this world,” Jen said proudly as he smoothed his braided coils like Medusa calming her snakes. “In my case my mother was human.”

  “Vampires are dead things, their sperm inert. They may very well be capable of erection, even ejaculation, but they are incapable of reproducing. How could one possibly be your father?”

  “I am very well aware of the procreative failings of the living dead,” Jen sniffed. “If you would allow me to continue, I’ll explain. I will admit that my biological father was human enough, although I have no clue as to his identity. Probably some drunken sot with tuppence in his pocket and a hard-on in his pants. As for my mother, she was a Whitechapel streetwalker.

  “Shortly after my conception, my mother fell in with a certain gentleman of Noble mien if you get my drift. She became his favorite for a few months—until she began to show her condition. As you know, the sight of a woman with child is anathema to vampires, those who are eternal and unchanging. The withering and dying of their human consorts is one thing—entropy, after all, is the vampire’s handmaiden—but the creation of new life! That is a painful reminder to them that they are forever locked outside the chain of nature. They claim to disdain how humans reproduce, but, in truth, they are deeply envious.

  “My mother’s lover cast her aside, but it was too late. I had already been affected by the venom he released into her each time he fed. When I was born, my mother placed me in a foundling home and went off in search of similar lovers, as the damnation they offered her was preferable to the living hell of the London slums. Over the years, my mother developed into a courtesan for those of Noble make. She even had a few lovers besides vampires, such as the occasional vargr princeling and kitsune diplomat. She became quite wealthy and bought a house in a fashionable part of London, which she then turned into a salon of sorts, where she received her clients.

  “As for myself, I was always... strange. Underweight, anemic, and of a morbid turn, my life was made a living hell by my warders and fellow inmates. Then, when I was eight years old, my mother suddenly reappeared and took me to live with her. Compared to the brutality and indifference of the foundling home, the world she introduced me to was practically idyllic.

  “When I was twelve years old it became increasingly obvious that I was something not quite human. I not only possessed the heightened senses of the vampire, but their innate understanding of what those around me truly desired, even if they did not know it themselves. I could also perceive the world around me as it truly is including those who prey upon the vast herds of humanity. But, by far, my surrogate father’s most lasting contribution was in the realm of longevity.” He paused and tilted his head to one side like a bird. “How old do you think I am?’

  “Forty?” Sonja replied with a shrug. “Forty-five?”

  “I’ll be one hundred and fifty come next June!” he exclaimed proudly, clapping his hands.

  “That’s all well and good, but it still doesn’t answer why you are here, and why I shouldn’t kill you,” Sonja pointed out.

  Jen held up one hand, begging her indulgence. “As I have said before, my employers are just that. They are not my liege and lady. I came of age in the very breast of monstrosity, if you will. I have no trouble admitting I feel no kinship towards humans. But neither do I consider myself a vampire. I am a nation unto myself; the lone member of a solitary race. I serve many masters, yet I am slave to none. And, I assure you, I am not here to see Luxor’s petty blood vendetta carried out. I am here on behalf of one known to you; one who considers himself more friend than foe.”

  “Pangloss,” Sonja said with a scowl.

  Jen nodded as he stood up. “Most astute, milady. He sent me instead of one of his broodlings because of your predilection for slaying vampires on sight. I am to bring you to him.”

  “I have no interest in seeing the good doctor again,” Sonja said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve had enough of his trickery. You can tell him what I told Luxor: If he wants Morgan dead, tough. I do not subcontract.”

  “You misunderstand the request,” Jen said. “Pangloss doesn’t give a tinker’s dam about Morgan. Not anymore, anyway. He wants to see you for another, far more personal reason.”

  “Such as?” she asked skeptically.

  “He’s dying.”

  Pangloss’ lair was located on the top three floors of a tony apartment building in Gramercy Park. The concierge at the reception desk glowered at Sonja as she entered the foyer of the building. However, upon seeing Jen, his eyes glazed, and his face went slack.

  “Pangloss has him conditioned,” Jen stage-whispered as they hurried into the elevators. “Whenever the doorman sees me, he goes into a fugue state. Does not remember who came in or when. Otherwise, he is tough to sneak by unannounced.”

  The elevator let them out at the penthouse. A Renfield dressed in pale green surgeon’s scrubs, his hair under a sterile disposable paper cap, greeted them as they exited the car. “Thank goodness you brought her! He is getting worse!”

  “The old bastard’s managed to continue for over fifteen hundred years,” Jen sighed, rolling his eyes. “I’m sure he can hold out for another hour or two.”

  The Renfield’s eyes hardened, and Sonja could tell he wanted to say— or do— something to the dhampire, but dared act. No doubt the thought of losing his master was making the Renfield jittery. If Pangloss was, indeed, dying, then his Renfields would not only find themselves stuck for a fix, but protection as well.

  Jen watched the indignant servant storm off, and then whispered behind his hand: “Renfields! They are all such drama queens!”

  They entered a large, handsomely appointed room with a killer view of the Chrysler Building glowing in the night like an art deco syringe. There was an old man seated in a wheelchair in front of a large flat-screen television. The old man turned his head toward them and smiled, revealing fangs the color of antique ivory.

  “Hello, my child,” Pangloss rasped. “So good of you to come.”

  Despite herself, Sonja was shocked by the vampire’s physical state. When Luxor had called Pangloss the ‘the old man’, she had been puzzled by his choice of words. Now she understood. The last time she had seen him, three years ago, he was no different from the first time they met, back in 1975. He had looked like a healthy, vigorous, and virile man in his early fifties, with only a touch of gray in his hair. But the creature that now sat in the wheelchair before her looked more like end-stage Howard Hughes than classic Cary Grant.

  What little hair Pangloss still possessed was the color of a soiled sheet and was now so long it hung almost to the middle of his back. His frame was wasted and his limbs twisted and infirm, with the persistent tremor of Parkinson’s. His hands were wrinkled and looked more like the claws of a vulture. He was swaddled in a white terry-cloth bathrobe and an adult diaper. Sonja moved closer, circling the thing in the wheelchair, trying to find the flaw in the disguise that would tell her it was all a trick. She could not find one.

  “How have the mighty fallen, eh?” the aged vampire said with a wheezing laugh. “I can tell you are surprised by my condition. I do not need telepathy to know that.”

  “Jen said you were dying, but I really didn’t believe
him,” she admitted.

  Pangloss smirked and nodded his head. Sonja could not tell if it was in understanding or a body tremor. “Jen is a terrible liar, so he always tells the truth. You would be wise to remember that.” He fixed his rheumy eyes on the dhampire, and for a fleeting second some of the old, self-assured Pangloss came back. “You’ve done what was asked of you. The Renfields should have your pay ready. Go now. I would speak with my granddaughter alone.”

  Jen smiled and left the room, pausing to give Sonja a wink before closing the door behind him.

  “You must forgive the boy,’ Pangloss wheezed. “His mother indulged him out of guilt for placing him amongst strangers the first years of his life. He fancies himself a dhampire. He is more than a little mad because of it, but not as unstable as the Renfields tend to be. He not only numerous vampires as his clients, but humans as well. His pain threshold is immense, and he can withstand tremendous amounts of physical punishment. He rents himself out to humans with a taste for beatings.”

  “I’ve been there,” Sonja muttered.

  “But enough about my half-bastard,’ Pangloss grimaced. “Oh, yes, I am the one responsible for his being what he is. Did he not tell you? The two of you are related, as our kind understands such things. Now, let’s get on to business. I suppose you want to know why I sent you those news clippings?”

  “I know why you sent them,” Sonja replied. “You wanted to alert me as to Morgan’s whereabouts so I can kill him and you can claim the glory and come off looking like a Big Bad with your bloodsuckin’ buddies.”

  Pangloss’ laughter was somewhere between a chuckle and a choking cough that sounded like it might bring up a lung. “My dear child, you have every reason to be suspicious of me. I’ve certainly done nothing to earn your trust in the past. But I am a changed man— or should I say vampire? The Pangloss you see before you is as different on the inside as he is on the outside.” He motioned feebly with one hand in the direction of the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the city. “Could you do me a favor, my dear? I would look at the night one last time.”

  Sonja grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him towards the window. She was surprised at how little he seemed to weigh. “I know this is going to sound stupid,” she said. “But how can you be dying? I mean, you’re already dead.”

  “A good question; and not at all foolish,” Pangloss replied. “There are those who think that we are immortal things. And, by human lights, we are. There are vampires who have continued for thousands of years. I have walked this earth since the days Clovis embraced the Christian god. But all things have their spans. The dead can be destroyed— of that you’re well aware. We can be killed by damaging our brains or spinal cords. We can be burned to death, decapitated, or die from exposure to the sun or silver. Still, we no longer age and are impervious to the host of illnesses that thin the human herds. However, there is one disease that is unique to our kind: the Ennui.”

  Sonja frowned. “You mean you’re dying from boredom?”

  “Wretched, isn’t it?” Pangloss sighed. “It is fate that awaits all vampires, once we move beyond the night-to-night concerns of keeping ourselves fed. What are brood wars but games of chess using animated game pawns? Why do we tamper in human affairs, if not to keep things interesting? Once we have indulged our appetite, what is left for us? We have spent so much time and energy maintaining the semblance of life, yet we are loath to admit that there is no reason behind any of it, save an instinctual drive to continue our existence.

  “In each vampire’s span there comes a time when the ceaseless scheming, plotting, and manipulation loses its allure. When that happens, we begin to question our motives and doubt whether our needs truly are as important as we once imagined them to be. That is when the Ennui sets in, and we begin to die. It is what happened to me. I can trace the beginning of my fall back to Rome, all those years ago, when you marked me with your knife. The wound you dealt me never truly healed.”

  Pangloss pulled open his robe and pointed to the long, jagged scar in the middle of his chest, surrounded by scores of paler, almost invisible ones covering his body, ghostly souvenirs of countless battles. Although Sonja knew the wound was over twenty years old, it was still pink and fresh. It was also the only part of him that looked alive. “I have suffered far more grievous injuries in my existence. However, this one refuses to be dismissed,” the old vampire said ruefully. “Whenever I look at it, I am reminded of how close I came to dying at your hand—and all for what? It has forced me to muse about my own mortality, and what I have acts I have committed in my fifteen hundred years on this planet.

  “I have known great men, both in the field of power and in the arts. I sat in the court of Charlemagne and watched it fall apart upon his death. I kept council with popes and bishops and cardinals. I watched the plagues sweep through the cities of Europe. I fled the burning of London three times. I witnessed the rise of countries, the fall of kings, and the birth of religions. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bosch, Voltaire, Defoe, Moliere— they all knew me, in my various guises. Yet, I had no real hand in anything that happened, save for when I manipulated others to destroy a marriage or weaken a friendship. My role has never been creative, only that of a parasite, feeding off society’s veins.”

  “The other Nobles dismiss me, you know,” Pangloss said, his head trembling so violently Sonja was afraid it might snap off and fall in his lap. “They always have. Just because I refused to take a title like ‘baron’ or ‘count’ or ‘duke’. Instead, I chose to call myself ‘doctor’. That is because I knew better than to lay claim to royalty. Once you do so, they others are on you like leeches, trying to bring you down. They also think me a fool for not feeding on the strongest of the dark emotions. But I have always preferred the petty jealousies and intrigues of artistic cliques to the horrors of concentration camps.

  “That idiot Luxor even had the audacity to insult me the last time we crossed paths! No doubt he was hoping to provoke me into declaring a brood war, knowing how weak I have become. Luxor is a coward, and Hedera’s no better! What is the point of continuing if I must spend the remainder of my days dealing with jackanapes such as Luxor? I’ve grown so weary of it all, Sonja. I am so tired now... so very tired.”

  “If you have, as you say, lost interest in playing the game, then why did you send for me?” Sonja asked.

  Pangloss’ lower lip began to tremble, and she was suddenly reminded of Jacob Thorne as he stood over his wife’s grave. “Because I’m scared,” the vampire admitted. “I’m scared of dying alone. I want you with me when the time comes.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was clear Pangloss’ servants did not relish the idea of their master heading of to the Elephant’s Graveyard. They were all very agitated and kept eyeing Sonja cautiously as they talked amongst themselves. The Renfields were particularly distraught.

  Sonja found Renfields, in and of themselves, pathetic and loathsome creatures. The vast majority of them were sensitives, of one stripe or another: telepaths, clairvoyants, dowsers, and the like. The two characteristics they all shared was a morbid appetite for their own destruction and a love of the undead that bordered on addiction. Nearly every Renfield she had ever met was heavily dependent on his or her master, who usually provided them with whatever they craved, be it drugs, sex, pain, or merely the ability to control the psychic powers that made life among ordinary humans impossible for them.

  Although Renfields definitely played their part in Noble society, Sonja had always wondered why such powerful vampires would lumber themselves with such deeply unstable servants. But now, watching Pangloss’ retinue flutter about their dying master like moths around a fading light, she finally began to understand. Vampires spend their existence doing nothing but taking from others, and by their nature are needful things. But with their Renfields, they could experience, in a twisted fashion, what it was like to be genuinely needed.

  “Please, master, I beg you to rethink what you ar
e about to do,” whispered one of the Renfields. He was in his late forties, with wide streaks of gray at his temple, and spoke with a European accent.

  “There’s no putting it off, Gustav,” Pangloss replied, levering himself out of his wheelchair. “It’s too far along for me to change back, even if I could.” He took a feeble step forward, and Sonja grabbed his elbow to steady him.

  “But, master, what of us?” Gustav asked. “What will become of us once you are gone?”

  “You can either make your own way in the world, or offer yourself to another Noble, such as Baron Luxor or the Marquis Caixão. The choice is yours,” Pangloss sighed. “Come, Sonja. It is time for us to go.”

  According to Pangloss, there were several necropoleis scattered throughout the great cities of the world, as well as some lost to human memory. All were held as sacred ground to the Pretending Races, no matter their breed. One such burial ground was located in Manhattan, accessible through tunnels interconnected to the old subway system.

  “There is an access point in the sub-basement of this apartment building,” the dying vampire explained. “That is why I chose this skyscraper as my final lair.”

  The sub-basement was only accessible via a second elevator from the penthouse, and proved to be dark and damp and smelled of rat piss. Sonja helped support Pangloss as they wound their way through stacks of moldering newspapers and collections of steamer trunks dating from the Belle Époque. In the farthest corner of the sub-basement was a narrow, low-set door made of iron, with strange runes chiseled into the lintel, written in the brain-twisting Pretender script. Pangloss produced a key from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her. Sonja fitted the key into the door and gave it a turn. It swung open with a squeal, displacing enough cobwebs to rig a schooner. There was a smell of old earth and stale water and, in the distance, could be heard the rumble of subway cars.