There was a loud hissing sound, like that of air escaping from a punctured tire, immediately followed by a thick blue-white smoke. Thinking it was merely a smoke-bomb, the vampires exchanged disdainful smirks amongst themselves…until the one closest to the canister abruptly sank to the ground, clutching at his throat as huge blisters filled with yellowish fluid rapidly appeared on his face and his eyes burst and ran down his ruined cheeks like bloody tears.
As identical blisters appeared on their exposed skin, the other vampires screamed in pain and alarm and began to frantically backpedal away from the rolling cloud. In their hurry to escape, they became entangled in the chains tethering the human ‘vintages’ to the walls of the speakeasy. The ensnared vampires slashed and tore at the hapless, latex-encased slaves as well as each other as the toxic mist closed over them like a phantom fist.
“Wretched creature!” Lady Hedera wailed as blisters rose like loaves of bread on her face. “What hell have you unleashed?”
“You like it?” Sonja grinned. “I got the idea from the aerosol grenades firefighters use to knock-out fires. But instead of releasing a cloud of pressurized free radicals, it uses vaporized colloidal silver. I paid an inventor guy I know to make up a batch for me. This seemed as good a time as any to give it a test run.”
Lady Hedera gave a dreadful shriek, like that of a wildcat, and launched herself at Sonja, fangs exposed and claws extended. The vampire-slayer leapt forward to greet her, the two colliding in mid-air like battling eagles. Hedera grabbed Sonja’s knife-hand by the wrist, blocking her blow while digging manicured talons deep into her throat. Sonja’s free hand snatched one of Hedera’s apple-like breasts free of the corselet’s cup and gave it a vicious twist. As the Noble screamed in pain, her voice dropped in register, and her breast dwindled like a deflating balloon as Lady Hedera hastily fled the field of battle and Baron Luxor made his return.
“There you are,” Sonja grinned.
“I’m going to tear your head off and shit down your neck,” Luxor growled as he dug his nails even deeper into her throat.
Sonja struggled for breath as her blood squirted out from between the vampire lord’s crushing fingers. As her vision started to dim, she grabbed at Luxor’s hair with her free hair and yanked as hard as she could, only to have his entire scalp slough away in her grip like wet newspaper. As she hurled her trophy to the floor, Luxor cried out and dived to retrieve it, surrendering his grip on Sonja’s throat. The vampire knelt down, frantically trying to re-arrange the sodden clump of hair and skin, so it covered his exposed skull, sobbing “My hair…my beautiful hair…my lovely, lovely hair!”
Grimacing in disgust, Sonja leapt onto the distracted Noble and quickly pinned Luxor to the floor. Although vampire’s entire face and upper body were covered in huge, swollen blisters as if he had been dipped into boiling oil, and his eyeballs were beginning to swell in their sockets, his physical strength was not in the least diminished. Luxor bucked and flailed as they grappled, frantically drumming his stiletto heels against the floor like a toddler throwing a tantrum, but Sonja refused to let go. As she drove the silver switchblade into the vampire lord’s heart, he screamed like a diva going for the highest note and then went still. Upon getting to her feet, Sonja could see that the Noble had died mid-transition, with one side eternally Hedera, the other Luxor. Although expending so much energy taking out a powerful vampire before meeting with Morgan might not be the smartest move, she had felt compelled to do so, just in case her rendezvous with her Maker did not turn out as planned.
She glanced about at what remained of the speakeasy. While the silver fog from the aerosol grenade had left the Black Grotto’s human servants and living ‘décor’ untouched, the same could not be said for its clientele. The vampires closest to the grenade when it deployed were destroyed instantly; their bodies liquefying where they dropped. Those farther away were equally doomed, if expiring at a slower rate of speed. They moaned piteously as they crawled about on their hands and knees, every inch of their exposed skin covered in oozing boils, leaving trails behind them like slugs. Sonja quickly moved among them, dispatching them with quick, efficient stabs to the base of the neck.
Mixed amongst the dead vampires strewn about the floor were a good number of Luxor and Hedera’s human servitors, who had the misfortune of getting caught in the stampede to escape the gas. From the looks of it, they had been mauled to death by the panicked vampires. Sonja recognized Luxor and Hedera’s gimp, the one she had momentarily freed on her previous visit, among the casualties as he had managed to pull the hood off his head before he bled out. The rest of the surviving Renfields and gimps were milling about with dazed, shell-shocked looks on their faces. She saw Luxor’s cup-bearer, his party frock now torn and coated in blood, whimpering like a child who has gotten lost at the mall.
As she continued to look around, her attention was drawn to one of the Black Grotto’s ‘private stock’—in this case, a woman in a black latex cat-suit and mask—who was desperately yanking on the chain welded to the corset cinched about her waist. As Sonja stepped forward to help, the captive woman spun about to face her, her eyes filled with terror.
“Go on—get out of here,” Sonja said as she snapped the length of chain with her bare hands.
The woman reached up and pulled the latex mask from her head, revealing a painfully young, terribly pale face, then turned and dashed for the door. However, halfway there, she stopped and turned back to stare at Sonja with haunted eyes.
“Why did you stop them?” The girl croaked, her voice rusty from disuse.
“Someone had to,” she replied.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The observation deck of the Empire State Building, located on the eighty-sixth floor of the most famous once-tallest skyscraper in the world, was officially closed after two in the morning. But nothing is off limits to creatures that can walk unseen by mortal men.
At street level, the wind was not particularly strong, but over eighty stories up was a different matter. Even with the Art Deco windbreaks that also served to keep the suicides at bay, the wind could not be denied as it tugged at Sonja’s hair and clothes like an insistent child demanding her attention.
Morgan was already there, waiting for her, the opera coat he was wearing flapping and snapping like a flag. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the city that lay spread before them like stars reflected in a still pond.
“I knew you would come,” he said without looking at her. “I have to ask: Are you still determined to kill me?”
“What else is there to do?” she replied with a shrug. “I don’t play cards.”
Morgan turned to look at her, favoring her with a twisted smile. “So you do have a sense of humor, then.”
“About some things,” she conceded. “But you’re not one of them.”
His gaze dropped to the eight-ball pendant hanging about her neck, and his contorted smile grew even wider. He nodded to himself and then returned his attention to the city.
“The city is beautiful, is it not?’ he said, gesturing to the horizon. “It’s alive, you know, not unlike a coral reef. Hundreds upon thousands upon millions of humans eating and shitting and fucking and dying in such a cramped physical location, their life forces united on an occult wavelength that they are unaware of.” He pointed in the direction of the Lower East Side. “Right now a drunken husband, enraged by his wife’s refusal to give him sex, is strangling his three-year-old stepson.” Warming to the subject, Morgan moved to the opposite side of the deck, waving a hand toward Central Park. “Police are still searching the park around Harlem Meer for a toddler belonging to a pair of Iowa tourists, who reported snatched the child snatched from his stroller by a Black man. In truth, they accidentally beat the child to death three days ago and buried him in a shallow grave in their backyard before leaving for New York.” Spinning on his heel like a demented weathervane, Morgan pointed at the southwest corner. “A balding closet queen with some min
or political clout is chatting up a handsome young man in a piano bar in the West Village. He doesn’t know it yet, but the object of his lust has raped and killed eight older gay men over the last three years, chopping up their bodies and disposing of them in plastic bags along lonely highways upstate.” Morgan swerved again, like a compass needle being drawn to true north. “In Spanish Harlem eight children between the ages of a few months to five years old are locked inside a one-room apartment with nothing but a television set while their parents work minimum wage jobs.” He grabbed one of the pay telescopes mounted on the edge of the railing and swung it about with a laugh. “God, I love this town!”
“I don’t need a tour of the city,” Sonja snarled. “Why did you ask me to meet you here?”
“Because I wished to continue our previous conversation in a location where we’re less likely to be so rudely interrupted.”
“I can guarantee Luxor’s brood will not be showing up unannounced again,” Sonja said with a crooked smile.
Morgan cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. Nothing has changed between us, Morgan.”
“If that is indeed the case, then why haven’t you attacked me yet?” he asked. “There are no witnesses here, no crowds of innocent bystanders to stay your hand.”
“Maybe I just do not feel like it right now,” she replied tersely.
“Surely you can find a better reason than that!” Morgan chuckled. “We both know you are lying. Are you sure the reason for your lack of action isn’t the fact you realize there is no longer a point to your vendetta?”
“What makes you think you know what’s going through my head?” Sonja snorted, fixing him with an angry glare.
“There is a current that exists between us— do you not feel it? You and I are far more simpatico, far more than any get I’ve Made. We are left hand and right hand; the tide and the shore; yin and yang. We are the same, you and I.”
“I’m nothing like you!” Sonja exclaimed, grimacing in disgust.
“Have you tasted the blood of the living? Answer me truthfully.”
Sonja frowned and looked away. “I try to keep to the bottled stuff, but sometimes it can’t be avoided…”
“Have you ever taken pleasure from the sufferings of others?”
“Yes, but they deserved it…”
“The only difference between you and me, Sonja, is that you still cling to the illusion of your humanity. Indeed, you hold yourself to ideals that the vast majority of them have discarded. I, on the other hand, look at humans and see nothing but mindless, cud-chewing cattle perpetually on the brink of a stampede. But you have somehow gotten it into your head that humans are to be envied instead of used.
“You seem to forget that it wasn’t our kind who invented the Nazi concentration camps, or the Russian gulags, or the Khmer Rouge killing fields, or the Serbian rape camps. Humans had no problem creating those living hells all on their own. Can you blame us for exploiting such fertile sources of nourishment? And it’s not as if you are innocent of feeding on the misery of innocents.”
“I’ve never done anything like that!” Sonja protested.
“Are you so sure of that?” Morgan countered. “Why do you spend so much time in the inner city? It is not just a matter of camouflage. Don’t you feel a high every time you prowl a ghetto neighborhood—the more crime-ridden the better? Doesn’t it make you feel more alive— more alert—to trawl for prey in the most hopeless sectors of town? Oh, I’m sure you tell yourself you are stalking those neighborhoods because that is where your prey is most likely to be. But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”
Sonja shifted about uncomfortably. Morgan’s insights were proving both disturbing and compelling. Part of her wanted to punch him in the mouth to make him shut up, but another wanted to keep listening.
“Do you know what it is like to be lonely, Sonja?” Morgan’s voice had become very intimate as if they were standing by a country lake instead of high atop a skyscraper. “Do you know what it’s like to be surrounded by people, yet still be painfully, horribly alone? Do you fear that you might someday disappear into the emptiness that once held your heart?”
“Yes,” she replied. Her voice was so quiet she wasn’t sure shed had spoken aloud.
“You know nothing of loneliness,” Morgan hissed, his voice suddenly growing a hard, rusty edge. “You won’t even begin to have an inkling for another century! To stand outside the flow of time and watch those you once called friends and lovers wither away and die is a unique form of Hell. No matter how many servants and consorts you surround yourself with, in the end, you will always be alone. But the worst part is the realization that you have no equal; that there is no companion who can challenge your expectations, or understand what drives you—unless you Make one yourself.
“The problem is finding a suitable candidate. The humans who are drawn to our kind are attracted to our inhumanity, our monstrosity if you will. They love us for what we are not, not for what we are. Those who seek us out are not worthy vessels, yet we Nobles fear Making a strong-willed human in our image. In our society, there are only two positions: master and slave. To not be one is to be the other. So our instinct is to infect the subservient, and avoid those with the inner strength that results in a fellow Noble. We do so out of fear of what might happen when the time comes for them to claim their place in the Ruling Class. To be a true Noble, one must break free of their Maker, if not actually destroy them.”
“You did not kill Pangloss,” Sonja pointed out.
Morgan fell silent for a moment, his face unreadable. “Pangloss did not require killing. When the time came, he recognized me as his better and surrendered his control. As I said, ours is a society of masters and slaves. That is why, in the five centuries since I threw off Pangloss’ yoke, he was never able to harm me.”
“Are you sure it’s not because he still loved you?”
Morgan’s response to this line of questioning was a bitter bark of laughter.
“His last words were of you,” she said. While not completely truthful, neither was it a lie.
“He’s dead, then?” Morgan asked, sounding only slightly surprised.
“Let’s just say the Pangloss you knew no longer exists,” Sonja replied.
Morgan shrugged. “The old bastard has not meant anything to me since the Medici were popes. You, on the other hand, intrigue me. You possess a vitality I find most invigorating. Perhaps it is your extreme youth that inspires me so? All I know is that whenever I think of you, whenever I am with you, I feel as if the world has been remade anew and that it is mine to conqueror.
“I have had numerous brides in my past, but I have yet to take a queen. We could rule the vampire and human worlds alike, you and I,” Morgan said, gesturing to the carpet of winking lights spread before them. “With your immunity to silver and daylight and the power and influence I have accumulated over six centuries of existence, we would be invincible. Every Noble on the face of the earth would either swear allegiance to us or be destroyed. We will be unstoppable. We will be forever.”
“Or I could just kill you.”
“And then what?” Morgan laughed. “Marry? Have children? Prepare for retirement? Killing me will not turn you back into Denise Thorne. And once you have disposed of me, what will you do to occupy yourself in the decades and centuries to come? You will be bored by everything and everyone because no sight will be unseen, no act undone. Nothing will be new to you. Without diversions and stimulation, the Ennui will claim you as it did Pangloss.
“Don’t you see? You have been acting on instinct, doing what comes naturally to our kind, but without understanding the why and wherefore of it all. I blame myself for your ignorance and self-loathing. After all, if I had been there for you, schooling you in the nuances of Noble society, you would not be as confused as you are now.
“You might be able to delude yourself, but you can not lie to me, child. I am your Maker, and when I l
ook at you, your flesh is like glass to me. I can see the darkness that lies coiled within your heart. I know you are weary of constantly battling with yourself and secretly long to surrender the burden of conscience you carry. I know you hunger to embrace your true nature and join me. For we were meant to be together, Sonja. Ignorance and foolish pride have kept us apart— but no longer! Come on, Sonja. It is time to lay down your burden and embrace your destiny.”
His words were so soft, so sweet, so soothing. They seemed to pour their way into her ears and wrap themselves about her brain. She suddenly felt so very, very tired. All she wanted was to curl up and fall into a deep sleep.
He is reeling you in like a fish! The Other shrieked, digging its talons into her forebrain. shrieking and spitting like an enraged mountain lion. Morgan’s an expert at finding vulnerable spots and manipulating them to his advantage! All this sweet talk about being his ‘queen’ is bullshit! Vampires are either masters or slaves! He said so himself! He is putting you in a trance! Wake up, damn you! Wake up and kill him before it is too late!
Sonja staggered backward as white-hot pain ripped through her gray matter, setting off explosions of black stars behind her eyelids.
Why are you letting him do this? The Other demanded as it frantically clawed at the inside of her skull like a trapped cat. Is this how you’ve chosen to punish us for Judd? By letting Morgan turn us into one of his gets?
Morgan smiled as much as his scar would allow as he watched Sonja claw at her temples. He had succeeded in pitting the divided elements of Sonja’s unstable personality against one another. He could see her aura resembled a spiky nimbus, with alternating strobes of red and black. He was reminded of when the gentry paid the Master of Lunacy at Bedlam to watch the madmen ‘at play’.
Divide and conquer, as they say.
She was floating in a great, black void, uncertain which way was up and which way was down. Suddenly the nothingness folded in on itself, like a piece of wadded up by an impatient child, and then just as rapidly unfolded again. Now she was standing on a vast, empty ice field. The wind howled like an angry thing in her ears. A huge, pockmarked moon climbed the starless sky, barely clearing the glaciers on the horizon. The ice beneath her feet gleamed darkly, like the carapace of an insect.
Books 1–4 Page 65
