At last Decima stopped before a huge oaken door on which was carved another lion’s head. She paused to glare over her shoulder at Sonja. “This is the audience chamber. Lord Esher awaits within. Tell me your name and who sired you, so I can properly announce you.”
Sonja shook her head. “No way. If he wants to know what’s my name and who’s my daddy, he’ll have to ask me himself.”
Decima’s jaw twitched. “You think you’re something special, don’t you?”
“Just open the fuckin’ door.”
Decima’s eyes flashed crimson, but she pushed open the door all the same. The audience chamber was hung with black velvet drapes and blood-red tapestries embroidered in gold thread with occult symbols and sigils. The room was lit by several cathedral-style candelabra, each as tall as a man, with curving arms that held over a hundred candles apiece. Esher was seated in a fifteenth-century Savonarola chair carved from walnut, behind which hung an exact replica of Notre Dame’s famed Rose Window, suspended by steel cables and lit from behind by artificial light. Curled about the vampire lord’s feet like a dozing cat was Nikola, her eyes half-lidded as he caressed her pale gray hair.
Esher learned forward to speak to the two Pointers Sonja had seen earlier: the skinhead with the spiderweb tattoo and the Haitian called Obeah. “I don’t care which one you pick—although I would prefer it to be one of the lesser lights, if you understand me; don’t waste anyone who might prove useful later on,” he said in a quietly authoritative voice. Upon Decima’s approach, he motioned for the Pointers to leave. “Do as you must.”
Sonja eyed the duo as they passed by her. The one with the tattoo, unlike the perimeter guard, openly returned her stare and sneered as he exited the audience chamber.
Esher leaned back in his seat, his hand resting atop Nikola’s silken head as if she were a faithful hound. “Have you anything to report, lieutenant?”
“Three of Sinjon’s brood were destroyed tonight. They were looking to retaliate for the Black Spoon I took down.”
“Good job, Decima,” Esher smiled.
“What are you thanking her for?” Sonja interjected. “She didn’t snuff ’em—I did!”
Esher straightened, his gaze focusing on the stranger standing before him. “Is this true, Decima?”
“Yes, sire, it is,” his lieutenant replied grudgingly.
“Then why did you not announce her?”
“She would not permit it, milord.”
The Noble lifted an eyebrow and turned his gaze on the vampire in mirrored sunglasses. “Indeed? Who are you, stranger? Who sired you? Which brood do you claim?”
“I am called Sonja. My sire was Sir Morgan, but I was abandoned shortly after he Made me.”
Esher leaned forward, staring at the stranger with interest. “You are an orphan?”
“Ronin is a better word for it, milord,” she replied with a crooked smile.
“Why did you slay three of my enemy’s brood?”
“As I told the lady with the fishhooks through her tits—they jumped me so I waxed them. It was a case of mistaken identity, it’s that simple.”
“Why are you in Deadtown?”
“I heard it through the grapevine you were looking for muscle. Rumor has it there’s a brood-war brewing between you and Lord Sinjon.”
Esher stood up abruptly, forcing Nikola to scoot out of his way. “I am merely protecting my interests! It would be foolish of me not to, considering the known aggressiveness of my opponent.”
“Absolutely, milord,” Sonja agreed.
Esher’s boots rang against the hardwood floor as he paced in a circle around the new recruit, eyeing her speculatively. “It is plain even to human eyes that you possess great strength and ability. It radiates from you like heat from a freshly forged sword. I would like you to join me, Sonja. To be on one’s own is no great virtue amongst our kind. You’re constantly on the move, always having to be careful not to expose your true nature to the human cattle, but also alert for rival vampires eager to poach your territory. Cast your lot with me, my dear, and you need never fear being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the daylight ever again.”
“Sounds tempting. What do I have to do to join?”
“You must surrender some of your blood.”
Sonja stiffened. “You want to partake of my essence?”
Esher smiled and held up a hand in appeasement. “It is only fair, since I am willing to extend to you the same protection I would give to one of my own brood. It is merely a formality.”
“I’ve gotten tired of being harassed by every punk with fangs I run into,” Sonja admitted wearily. “I guess it’s time I belonged to something besides myself. Very well, I’ll do it.”
Esher smiled, clapping her on the shoulder. “You have made a wise decision.” He snapped his fingers and Nikola got to her feet, swaying like a reed. “Nikola! Bring me a dagger!”
The dancer ducked behind the Savonarola and retrieved an ornately jeweled scabbard. Moving like a sleepwalker, she brought it to her master. Esher smiled indulgently and caressed her pallid cheek with the ball of his thumb.
“Is she not exquisite, my friend?” “Yes, she’s quite—lovely,” Sonja replied.
“She is mine, and mine alone. Is that understood?” Esher said, fixing her with a hard stare.
“Perfectly, milord.”
Esher motioned for Sonja to remove her leather jacket. She did as she was instructed, revealing a tattered black Cramps t-shirt underneath. Esher pulled the dagger from the scabbard, revealing a pure platinum blade that gleamed like wet ice in the reflected candlelight. With a single stroke, he opened her inner forearm from elbow to his wrist. The lips of the cut pouted, then opened wide, revealing several layers of skin. Had she been human, Sonja’s life would have come gushing forth in a crimson geyser, but instead Esher was forced to grab the underside of her elbow and squeeze, milking the wound so that it bled. After several long seconds a dark, viscous liquid, looking more like molasses than blood, welled from the cut. Esher pressed his lips to the wound, sucking the blood offered him. His lids fluttered as his eyes rolled back in their sockets and he groaned as if on the brink of orgasm. With a sudden, shuddering gasp, Sonja jerked her arm away and stepped back, blinking like a sleepwalker shaken from a dream.
“You said just a taste!” she snapped, reaching for her jacket.
“That I did,” he agreed as he got to his feet. “Forgive me for forgetting myself. Your essence is…intoxicating. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it before.”
“Am I in the club? Do I get a secret decoder ring?”
“From this night on you are under my protection. My only request is that new recruits nest within the catacombs.”
“As you wish, milord,” Sonja replied.
The moment the new recruit exited the audience chamber, a livid Decima turned to face Esher. “Why did you accept her?” she asked, her voice trembling with anger. “I don’t trust that mirror-eyed bitch any farther than I can spit!”
“Jealous, my dear?” Esher smirked, as he returned to his seat.
“There’s nothing to be jealous of!” Decima sniffed. “She’s just some smart-ass orphan!”
“You know that’s not true, my dear,” Esher chided. “You could feel her power, just as I did. Whatever else this Sonja may be—she’s a walking weapon.”
“She’s dangerous is what she is, Esher! You’re playing with sunlight, bringing her into your brood! Get rid of her!”
“What? And risk her going over to Sinjon? Besides, I believe in keeping my friends close, but my enemies closer. That is why I insisted she bunk in the catacombs. I fully intend to keep track of our newest recruit’s comings and goings. Besides, should she prove bothersome, I can always cast a spell that will boil her brain like a cabbage.”
“Are you sure that’s the only reason you want h
er underfoot? I didn’t like the way you looked when you tapped her.”
Esher backhanded Decima so hard it sent her flying to the floor. “You forget your place!” he snarled. “Something you’ve been doing far too much of late for my tastes! If I hadn’t Made you myself, you’d be destroyed by now!”
“Forgive me, sire.” Decima muttered as she staggered to her feet, blood oozing from her nostrils.
“Perhaps. But first I want you to send a message to the Black Lodge. Tell Lord Sinjon that there has been a grave misunderstanding between our two factions. Tell him I’m interested in calling a truce and that I would discuss it with him at the Dance Macabre come midnight.”
“As you wish, milord. Is there anything else?”
“No, there is not,” Esher snapped. “Now leave. I would be alone with my bride-to-be.”
“As you command, milord,” Decima whispered, backing out of the audience chamber, her head lowered in ritual submission. But as she closed the heavy oaken doors behind her, she silently swore that she would see to it that both Nikola and bitch called Sonja would soon come to very short and ugly ends.
A FISTFUL OF ROSES
Keep not your roses for my dead, cold brow
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
—Arabella Smith, “If I Should Die To-Night”
Chapter Nine
Eyes closed to the swirling chaos around her, Sonja followed Esher’s servant, Orgot, into the bowels of the vampire lord’s house. “Pretty fancy digs,” she said as they climbed down an inverted spiral staircase. “But how do you find your way around this joint?”
“Once you become used to it, it ain’t too hard,” the former wino replied. “Lord Esher is the heart of the House, no matter where he may be. Once you find him, gettin’ round is simple enough.”
“Find him? How could I possibly find him in this madhouse?”
“He tasted your essence. Blood calls to blood. All you gotta do is listen.”
Sonja came to a standstill, turning her attention inward. She could feel something vibrating within her, the way fine crystal responds to a tuning fork. The sensation was faint but persistent—and vaguely sexual. “I see what you mean,” she muttered uneasily.
They continued their downward climb until they came to a large cellar with stone walls and a dirt floor. The underground room was huge, occupying twice the space of the building above it. The central vault was crowded with discarded sofas, old couches, tossed-out mattresses, and stained futons, arranged in narrow, crooked rows, like a cross between an army barracks and a homeless shelter.
A network of tunnels, some shored up by brick lintels, others little more than oversized gopher holes, radiated from the main chamber like spokes from a wheel. Save for a few rats and silverfish, the place was deserted.
“This is the main nest,” Orgot explained. “The master’s recruits sleep here during the day.”
“Looks like a real happenin’ place,” she observed drolly.
“Come the dawn it will be jammed. I’d recommend finding a place to doss down before it gets too crowded, if you don’t want to end up sleeping on the floor.”
“What if I decide I want to sleep elsewhere?” she asked.
The wino-turned-vampire shook his head. “That is strictly forbidden. All recruits are to nest within the central vault. Any recruit found bunking outside the catacombs is to be destroyed.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Sonja sighed. She threw her arm about her escort, catching him in a headlock. Although Orgot was far stronger than he appeared, he had a weakness for battening onto his former Skid Row drinking buddies, which made him perpetually tipsy. He yowled like a cat as Sonja’s silver switchblade slipped between his ribs and found his heart. A second later he collapsed like a bag of wet laundry. Sonja wedged his rapidly putrefying corpse under a stained red velvet sofa that reeked of mildew and cat urine where, hopefully, he would go unnoticed for awhile.
She sprinted toward what looked to be the most heavily traveled tunnel. She had no intention of remaining in Lord Esher’s barracks, and the sooner she was outside his immediate reach, the better. The vampire Noble was a powerful, charismatic personality; staying in close proximity to him would only strengthen the bond that now existed between them. She had not planned on allowing him to taste her blood, but there had been no way around it. To refuse would have made Esher even more suspicious of her. As it was, she was having a hard time controlling her revulsion around the Noble and his cohorts. There was nothing in the world she hated more than vampires. For decades she had dedicated herself to killing them on sight. Having to play along with their petty rules and constant head games as if she was just like them was enough to make her sick. But at least she now had a better idea of what was up with Nikola. Getting her away from Esher was going to be tricky. The bastard had her heavily mesmerized and doped to the gills, of course. Such measures went a long way to making unwilling brides far more tractable.
She emerged from the tunnel and found herself in one of the exposed cellars that ringed the House. The open pit was littered with broken bottles, discarded rubbers, and rat and dogs carcasses that had been drained dry of blood. A ramshackle flight of wooden stairs led topside. Upon reaching street level, she spotted three humans dressed in Pointer colors gathered around a burning trashcan. She recognized the skinhead with the spiderweb tattooed on his skull and the man called Obeah, crept into a patch of nearby shadow, using the vampire’s trick of remaining unseen while in plain sight. Satisfied she was properly camouflaged, she focused her attention on the trio’s conversation.
“You with us, cuz?” the skinhead asked.
“I’m with you, Webb,” grinned the third Pointer, who was a tall Anglo with BORN2LOSE tattooed onto his left forearm.
“I don’t want anyone going whack on me when the shit goes down. You pull that on me, I’ll bust a cap in your head. I ain’t gonna shit you, man—we might not make it back from this stunt. But if we do, we’re set for life. Maybe longer. Esher can be very generous when the mood strikes him, dawg.”
Born2Lose nodded his understanding. “I said I’m in, Webb. Just tell me what you need me to do.”
Webb grinned and nodded for Obeah to hand him the knapsack. “One of the Borges Brothers is waitin’ for the Spoons at the docks tonight. Only the Spoons don’t know it. Esher figured out the code they were using to set up their drug buys. So Borges is expectin’ to do a deal tonight, only he thinks he’ll be sellin’ to Sinjon’s boys.” He opened a duffel bag sitting at his feet and pulled a leather jacket out of it, on the back of which was the Jolly Roger emblem of the Black Spoons. “And who are we to tell him different, right?”
Born2Lose frowned at the rival gang jacket. “You want me to wear Spoon colors?”
“Just for a little while, that’s all.”
“I don’t get it—why don’t we just show up, waste the asshole and take his stash?”
“Cause Lord Esher doesn’t want the Borges Brothers down on him! He wants them going after Sinjon. Haven’t you ever heard of divide and conquer, cuz?”
“No,” Born2Lose replied dully.
“Well, that’s what Esher wants, so that’s what he’s gonna get, okay? Now put on the fuckin’ jacket and let’s get this damn show on the road!”
Grumbling under his breath, Born2Lose did as he was told, replacing his colors with the Black Spoon gear. The whole time Sonja watched them from her hiding place completely unnoticed.
She wondered what Esher had up his sleeve. Whatever was going down tonight sounded important; and far be it from her to miss what promised to be the pivotal social event of the season.
“Where’s Rico?” growled Dario Borges, eyeing the youth with the spiderweb tattooed on his skull. “Rico usually handles the buys.”
“Rico had hisself an accident a few nights back,” Webb replied matter-of-factly. “It was v
ery sad. We’re still broke up about it.”
They were standing in Warehouse 69, on the riverside boundary that separated Deadtown from the rest of the city. The place smelled of coffee beans and machine oil. Borges, a small man with a neat mustache and a middle-age paunch, stood with his back to a stack of Arabica beans in burlap bags, flanked by two massively built men in dark suits with bulges in their armpits. At his feet was a Nike gym-bag.
Borges shrugged. “Shit happens. You got the money?”
Webb grinned and opened the briefcase he was carrying, holding it so Borges could see the neatly bundled bills. “Three hundred grand for five kilos, as per the agreement. Would you like to count it?”
Borges smiled tightly and shook his head. “No need. I trust Sinjon—at least when it comes to money.” He snapped his fingers and motioned for one of the bodyguards to take the briefcase, only to have Webb take a step back.
“That may hold true for you,” the skinhead sneered, “but not Lord Sinjon. No sugar without snow, amigo.”
The bodyguard started to reach inside his jacket, but Borges stopped him with a wave of a neatly manicured hand. “Your master trains his servants well,” he said ruefully, unzipping the gym bag and holding it open for inspection.
Webb smiled and reached for the proffered bag—only to drop to the warehouse floor. The first bullet caught Borges square in the heart, dropping him like a stag at a watering hole. The bodyguards were sprayed with bullets before they could clear their holsters.
Webb picked himself off the bloodied warehouse floor and grinned up at his compatriots hidden among the bags of coffee beans, giving them a victorious “thumbs-up.” Obeah and Born2Lose came sliding down from their snipers’ perches, laughing and whooping like excited kids.
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