Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  “Out doin’ stuff. He’ll be back soon. It’ll be dark in an hour.” He paused for a moment, eyeing her speculatively. “Are you really a monster?”

  Sonja nodded as she patted down her pockets, not seeming to take offense at the question. “You could say that.”

  “What kind of monster?”

  She flashed a grin at the boy, revealing pearly white fangs. “The kind that eats monsters.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I want you to show me which ones are normally posted as guards.”

  Ryan pointed at a youth with a shaved head was covered by a spiderweb tattoo. “He’s one.” He then motioned to an older thick-set African-American with tangled, graying dreadlocks and a wicked-looking machete hanging from his belt. “He’s usually there, too. I think they’re friends.”

  Ryan and Sonja were watching the house where Esher kept Nikola when she wasn’t dancing at the club or keeping him company. Although they were less than thirty feet away, the Pointers hanging about the front stoop did not see them because they were hiding in the storm drain across the street from the brownstone, with Ryan standing atop a plastic milk crate so he could see past the drain’s concrete lip.

  “Do you watch from here every night?” Sonja asked.

  “Uh-huh. Unless it’s rainin’. That’s how come I can get away from the Pointers so easy—I slip down the old drains and hide from them.”

  “Aren’t you scared of the rats down here?”

  “At first, yeah—they’d hiss at me and stuff, but if I carry a stick or throw stuff at them, they run away and leave me alone. Eddie says they’re more scared of me than I am of them, anyway.”

  “You’re a brave kid, Ryan. Braver than most men.” Sonja smiled and placed her hand on his head, only to have the boy go completely rigid. At first she thought it was because she’d touched him; then she saw the door to the house across the street swing open.

  The female vampire from the night before—the one with the crossbow—stepped out and motioned to the African-American with the machete. The Pointers gathered on the stoop snapped to attention. One of them produced a cell phone, and a second later the black ’57 Cadillac pulled up to the curb.

  “That’s Decima,” Ryan whispered, pointing to the vampire. “I hate her. She’s really mean.” There was a vehemence to the boy’s voice that was far older than his years.

  Decima turned to the front door of the brownstone and waved her crossbow. Nikola stepped over the threshold, blinking in confusion. She was dressed in a white velvet sheath that clung to her like a second skin and exposed a great deal of thigh and cleavage. One of the Pointers at the foot of the stoop broke into an unabashed leer. The African-American with the machete saw the look on his face and came barreling down the steps.

  The Pointer’s lustful stare disappeared, to be replaced by a look of genuine fear. He took a couple of steps backward, raising his hands as if to shield himself. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Obeah! I swear to God I didn’t—!”

  “There’s no point in swearin’ to your god, fool!” Obeah thundered. “This is Deadtown—only devils hear your prayers here!” With that he brought the machete down with one powerful stroke. The Pointer screamed as blood geysered from the stump that had, seconds before, been his right hand. His companions swore and jumped back, but did not offer to come to his aid as he collapsed onto the sidewalk, clutching his spurting wrist. “You dissed Lord Esher by looking at his woman in such a way!” Obeah barked. “Such insolence is not tolerated!” The machete struck again, as quick as lightning. The Pointer cried out as the blade sliced his nose off as cleanly as a surgeon’s scalpel.

  Sonja raised an eyebrow in surprise. “So Esher has a Tonton Macoute guarding his bride-to-be.” She glanced down at the boy by her side. Ryan was watching the Haitian take apart the hapless Pointer, his face as unreadable as a plank. When she looked back, it was to see the fallen gang member lying on the sidewalk in a widening pool of blood, with Obeah carefully cleaning his machete blade with a handkerchief.

  Decima grabbed Nikola by her upper arm and hurried her down the stairs to the waiting car. Obeah climbed in after them, while the man with the spiderweb tattoo got into the front passenger seat.

  The moment the car doors slammed, Ryan hopped down off the milk crate and gathered it in his arms. “C’mon-we’ve got to follow her!” He wiggled down the concrete throat of the drain, pushing the plastic crate ahead of him. A minute or so later they came to an open mouth that fed into the main sewer. Ryan lowered the crate onto the narrow walk that flanked either side of the sluiceway and then clambered down.

  “How can you follow them when you can’t see where the car’s going?” Sonja asked.

  “It’s Thursday!” Ryan explained as he hurried along the catwalk. “She always goes to his place on Thursdays, just like she always goes to the club on Wednesdays and Saturdays!”

  “Whose place?”

  “Duh! Esher’s, of course!” the boy replied, rolling his eyes.

  The House of Esher dated back to the time when people built in a grand manner, and was surrounded by piles of rubble and yawning, symmetrical holes that had once been basements. This wasteland was not a result of random decay or planned urban renewal. Instead, Esher had personally ordered the demolition of every other building on the block. This was because he liked to see company coming long before it arrived.

  There were sentry posts at either end of the street, manned by gang members armed with Uzis and repeating shotguns, who controlled who came in and out of the area. Campfires flickered and reefer smoke rose like ground mist from the outlying exposed cellars, which served as makeshift barracks for the Pointers. The gaping holes closer to the mansion, however, served a far more sinister purposes, as they were the entry and exit points to the tunnels that honeycombed the neighborhood, and were used exclusively by the vampire lord’s brood.

  The street outside the House of Esher was crowded with Pointers sporting their colors, milling about aimlessly. Some lounged on the wide stairs that lead to the front door, while others perched on makeshift stools fashioned from cast-off crates. The oldest member of the gang looked to be twenty-five, while the youngest was no more than thirteen. While there were no women to be seen amongst their number, there were plenty of firearms, with each member of the gang proudly displaying a weapon tucked in their waistband.

  “Interesting,” Sonja muttered. She was perched atop a six-story tenement building two blocks away, watching the gang members with a pair of binoculars. “This Esher has built himself quite the army of sociopaths.”

  “How can you see that far with those sunglasses on?” Ryan asked. “I can’t see anything from here!”

  “My eyes aren’t like yours. I can see things better at night than most people can at high noon.”

  “Neat! Like a kitty, right?”

  “Kind of.”

  “I used to have a kitty named Koko, but the landlord found out and made us get rid of him. He said Koko had fleas. He was really mean and I hated him. The landlord, that is—not Koko.”

  Sonja placed a hand on Ryan’s shoulder; the boy’s collarbone felt like the strut of a balsa wood kite. “I need you to do as I say, understand? I’m going to get inside Esher’s stronghold and try to find out how I can help your mom. But from what I’ve seen, I’m not going to be able to sneak in.”

  “So how are you gonna do it?”

  “If he thinks I’m his friend, then maybe I can trick him,” she explained. “But I can’t let Esher or anyone who works for him find out that we know each other. I want you to get back to Eddie’s as fast as you can without being noticed and stay there, okay? And when you see me on the street again, pretend you don’t know me, you understand? Everything depends on it.”

  Ryan nodded, his features taking on a solemnity made even more poignant by his extreme youth. “I understand. You’re going undercover, li
ke the cops on TV.”

  “You’ve got it, Sonja smiled, ruffling his hair. “Now get on back to Eddie’s. It’s not safe out here.”

  The boy headed for the doorway that lead down from the rooftop, then turned to look at her. “Do you have kids, lady?”

  Sonja nodded sadly. “A long time ago I had a little girl.” “What happened to her?”

  She paused for a long second, looking across the rooftops to the stars dimly twinkling through the pall of pollution and light reflected from the city. “She grew up and didn’t need me anymore.”

  “I need you, lady,” Ryan said quietly. “My mom does too.” With that the ragged five-year-old closed the door to the roof behind him.

  Sonja took a deep breath and let it out slowly while massaging her forehead. She hadn’t come to Deadtown to save anyone. But here she was, making promises to reunite a kindergarten student with his strung-out mom. She was really setting herself up this time. Once she was certain the boy was safely gone, she fixed the snaps on her leather jacket, gave her steel-toed boots a quick buff against the backs of her pants legs, and strode down the otherwise-deserted street in the direction of Esher’s stronghold.

  Save for the flicker of a television screen, or the occasional flash of a wan, frightened face peering out from the windows of the tenement buildings she passed, Deadtown seemed as moribund as its name implied. Suddenly three figures moved to block her way. Their movements were fast and fluid, like those of stalking panthers. She halted instantly, but did not move to flee.

  “I told you we’d find her if we bided our time,” one of the vampires said with a voice as dry as corn husks.

  “What are you talking about?” snarled the second. “I’m the one who suggested staking out the neighborhood!”

  “Shut up!” snapped the third. “There’s plenty of time for arguing over who gets the credit for capturing her after we deliver her head to Lord Sinjon!”

  “My-my-my!” she said with a derisive laugh. “What have we here—the Three Billy Goats Gruff?”

  The first vampire made a disgusted noise and drew himself up to his full height. “Your days of insulting our master are over, Decima!”

  Sonja chuckled and shook her head. “I think you’ve got me mixed up with someone else, fellas.”

  “Don’t try to confuse us, bitch!” growled the second vampire. “We know you’re the one responsible for slaying Lord Sinjon’s guard on the steps of the Black Lodge! You left your calling card jutting out of his back! Did you think our master would allow such an insult to go unpunished? He wants your head for his mantelpiece, Decima. And we’ve come to collect it!”

  Sonja’s half-smile quickly turned into a frown. These pinheads were starting to annoy her. “Can’t you get it through your thick heads? I’m not this ‘Decima’ person you’re looking for! Now, I’m only going to ask you nicely once more to clear out of my way—”

  Suddenly the third vampire hissed like an angry cat, and the trio set upon her all at once. The first circled behind her, while the second and third came in high and low. Sonja caught the third vampire squarely in the jaw with a kick from her steel-tipped boots, busting it so that it dropped open onto his chest, revealing his pink, flapping tongue. The second vampire ended up skewering himself onto her open switchblade, puncturing his right lung like a toy balloon. He shrieked like a stallion in a gelding stall, pulling himself off the silver knife-blade with a convulsive jerk. He tore open his shirt to expose a pallid, hairless chest. The flesh surrounding the puncture wound was already swelling and turning black, becoming instantly gangrenous.

  “What manner of sorcery is this?” rasped the first vampire, freezing in horror upon seeing his companion collapse onto the cobblestoned street in anaphylactic shock from the silver in his undead bloodstream.

  Sonja answered by spinning about and plunging the switchblade into the first vampire’s right eye. He shrieked in agony, and a second later his left eye ballooned outward, like that of some absurd cartoon character, before bursting.

  Seeing what had befallen his comrades, the vampire with the broken jaw turned to flee, only to find his escape blocked by his erstwhile prey. He lifted his hands in supplication and sputtered something that might have been a plea for mercy just before she drove her switchblade into his abdomen. He instantly dropped to the ground, where he lay writhing at her feet like a worm stranded on a hot sidewalk. She closed her switchblade and returned it to its hiding place and resumed traveling in the direction of the House of Esher.

  She had barely taken three steps before hearing the sound of automatic weapons being chambered. A woman’s voice suddenly barked from the darkness: “Halt!”

  Several Pointers armed with AK47s emerged from the surrounding shadows. Accompanying them was the female vampire Sonja had seen escorting Nikola into the club. She was dressed in a black leather jacket and matching leather jeans and carried a loaded crossbow.

  Decima scanned the carnage and then frowned at Sonja. “What’s going on here?” “Nothing. Anymore.”

  “Don’t get cute with me!” Decima snapped. She nodded to one of the Pointers, who

  rolled over one the dead vampires with a ginger nudge from his boot, since all three bodies were already swelling from advanced putrefaction.

  “They’re from Sinjon’s brood, milady!” he reported.

  Decima’s frown deepened and she turned her gaze back to Sonja. “Why did you kill them?”

  “I didn’t have any choice,” she replied. “They attacked me. They kept talking about bringing my head back to their sire.”

  A look of bafflement crossed Decima’s face. “Why would Lord Sinjon want your head?”

  Sonja pointed to the crossbow Decima was carrying. “It was all a case of mistaken identity. They thought I was you.”

  Decima’s spine straightened in indignation. “That’s absurd!”

  “Yeah—I wasn’t very flattered, either.”

  Esher’s lieutenant raised her hand to slap the other woman for her impudence, only to find the stranger’s hand clamped firmly about her wrist. She tried to tug it free, only to have the fingers tighten their grip.

  “That’s no way to treat somebody who’s just done you a big favor,” Sonja said frostily as she let go of her arm. “As I see it, those are three fewer enemies you have to worry about later on.”

  “What do you want?” Decima spat as she massaged her wrist.

  Sonja smiled, revealing gleaming fangs below the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses. “I heard you were hiring.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Who goes there?” The perimeter guard barked, bringing his riot gun to bear on the figures that emerged from the shadows beyond his checkpoint. The guard tensed for a moment, then relaxed as he recognized Esher’s field lieutenant. “Oh, it’s you, milady.”

  Decima did not bother to respond, brushing past the sentry as if he did not exist, Sonja following in her wake. The guard stared at Sonja until she turned her mirrored eyes in his direction, and then he quickly looked away, returning his attention to the darkness beyond his post. When it came to humans, the Pointers were as aggressive and vicious as a wolf pack, but the undead was another matter entirely.

  The House of Esher loomed over the blasted landscape like a mammoth tomb. Sonja focused her attention on the building, dropping her vision into the Pretender spectrum in order to read its occult energy fields. She had to bite her tongue to keep from swearing out loud. The aura surrounding the stronghold pulsed and vibrated with considerable power.

  There was definitely magic at work here.

  She had heard rumors that Esher was a warlock as well as a vampire. She had dealt with powerful Nobles before, but their strength had lain in the disciplines of the mind, not sorcery. Granted, she had knowledge of magic through her business arrangements with such alchemists-for-hire and spell-slingers as the kitsune Li-Lijing and the petit
daemon Malfeis, but that was about the extent of her knowledge. It was clear from the braided chains of etheric energy surrounding Esher’s stronghold that this was going to be tricky. Very tricky, indeed.

  The Pointers lounging on the stairs leading to the front door abruptly snapped to attention upon catching sight of Decima. The heavily-pierced vampire did not bother to look in their direction as she glided up the steps. She paused on the front threshold, her hand resting on an ornate brass doorknob fashioned to resemble the head of a roaring lion.

  “This is the House of Esher, the heart of his domain. It is his power made manifest. I will warn you but once, stranger—do not stray from the central corridor.”

  Having issued her caution, Decima pushed the door open and motioned for Sonja to enter. The moment she crossed the threshold the floor of the building abruptly fell away like the bottom of a carnival ride Gravity Barrel, and its interior began to spin in a dizzying circle. She saw numerous doors speeding past at a fearsome pace; some of the doors were above her head, while others were under her feet, while others still simply hung suspended in empty space. Some of the doors bore numbers, others were marked with signs, while some were even shaped like birds or lizards.

  “Do not move,” Decima instructed, her voice seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere. “Do not try to open any of the doors you see before you. Only the corridor is safe. The corridor leads to Esher, no matter where he may be. Close your eyes. Do you see it?”

  Sonja did as she was told. The dizzying carousel of doors disappeared, to be replaced by the image of a perfectly ordinary hallway, decorated with tasteful wallpaper and gilt-framed portraits. As she focused her attention on the corridor, Decima appeared before her, motioning impatiently.

  “Hurry up! I haven’t got all night to waste on you!” she snapped. Sonja stepped forward, her eyes still tightly shut. She followed Decima, keeping to the corridor as it snaked its way through the house. At times the hallway seemed to turn in on itself and she found herself walking back the way she came. She battled a surge of vertigo as the corridor twisted into itself, turning the floor and ceiling into a Moebius strip. Still, she had to admire the skill and knowledge necessary to create such an impressive magical construct. It took a great deal of power and effort to bend space so deftly. Esher’s stronghold made the spirit-house called Ghost Trap she’d once visited look like a shoebox diorama.