Sonja reached into her pocket and pulled out a fist full of dollars bills. “You’ve got some time to kill before the flight. Why don’t you go get yourself something to snack on, kid? Here, knock yourself out.”
Ryan tucked his book under one arm and eagerly accepted the offered money, scurrying across the concourse to the Cinnabon stand much like he had navigated the streets of Deadtown.
“He’s a wonderful kid,” Sonja said, as she watched the boy press his nose against the pastry case. “You’re very lucky, Nikola.”
“I know,” she replied quietly.
Sonja turned so that her mirrored gaze was focused directly on the dancer. She slid her sunglasses down so that Nikola had an unobscured view of her eyes. “Get this straight: I didn’t do any of this for you,” she said, her voice as hard and unyielding as tempered steel. “I did it for the kid. And if word gets back to me that you are involved in drugs, back on the pole, or bringing home dangerous men, I’ll come looking for you. And, believe me, you don’t want that. Have I made myself understood?”
Nikola nodded dumbly, her face drained of what little color it possessed.
“Good,” Sonja smiled as Ryan returned with a cinnamon roll the size of his head. “I’m glad we could see eye-to-eye.”
Sonja glanced through the window of the taxi at the 747 soaring overhead. She wondered if Ryan was preoccupied with the wonders of the first-class cabin or if he was staring out the window, trying to catch a final glimpse of the world he and his mother had just escaped. Or perhaps he was just reading Make Way For Ducklings and finally getting back to being a kid.
She wondered if she did the right thing tampering with Nikola’s mind at the last minute, but couldn’t find it in herself to feel that bad about what she’d done. So what if she planted a couple of subliminal suggestions and bumped up the woman’s sense of responsibility and self-respect a little higher? It wasn’t like she was telling her to go out and start shooting at cars on the freeway. Nikola had the basic hardwiring and genuine love for her son to make a really good mom—but there was also a darkness in her, as well. There had to be for Esher to have such sway over her. Esher wasn’t the first lover in her life to prey upon her chronic bad taste in men and weakness for cocaine, but he was certainly the most monstrous.
Come nightfall mother and son would be safe and sound on the other side of the country. They would be facing a brave new world free—at least on the surface—of bloodsucking monsters. While she, on the other hand, would be trying to drain the swamp and up to her ass in alligators. But that was nothing new, was it?
As the taxi headed back into the city, she grimaced and fought the urge to scratch the stump of her left pinkie. The damned things always itched like hell when they grew back.
Chapter Eighteen
As Esher emerged from his day’s hibernation, the events of the previous night remained fresh in his mind. As he climbed out of his casket, which was designed so that the side was on a hinge and would drop away when the lid was unlocked and lifted from the inside, Esher reminded himself that he would soon need to requisition a larger version, so that Nikola might sleep beside him during the day. He was at a loss to explain his obsession with the dancer, even to himself. But that is how it always was with vampires their consorts. The fascination burns bright and strong, and although it is not true love, it gives off enough light and heat to pass for the real thing. Only during these passing moments of mad fancy did Esher truly feel alive. There was a time, years ago, when he had been similarly obsessed with Decima—and Darcy before her.
Esher did not like thinking about Darcy, as he found dwelling on this mistakes distasteful. But perhaps what bothered him the most was how her visage would sometimes come to him unbidden, in a moment’s quiet, even a hundred years later.
In life she had been a beer-hall songstress, singing for pennies in the Bowery’s rowdy houses. Her hair was black as a raven’s wing; and her skin, when scrubbed of the coal-dust and filth of the Lower East Side, was as white as the flesh of an apple. It was her voice, however, that first drew him to her. He was walking down the crowded sidewalks, searching for that evening’s prey, when he heard what sounded like an angel lost among the damned. He went in and out of the myriad dives lining the street until he came to one with straw and sawdust spread across the floor to sop up the beer, vomit and blood. And there, amid the squalor, he found an fifteen-year-old girl standing on the bar and singing for the pennies pitched her way by drunken miscreants, while her father stood by, drinking what meager wages she earned as quickly as he could, and eager to pimp her to any taker for the price of a bottle of rotgut.
That very evening Esher brought Darcy under his wing by pretending to be an impresario interested in promoting her as the next Jenny Lind. It wasn’t difficult to make her wretched father ‘disappear’ and for him to take his place as her manager and confidante. For six years he kept her human, while slowly educating her in the same occult secrets Gabor had shared with him. His decision to make her his equal proved a near-fatal mistake.
Thirty years later, Darcy, herself, became enamored of a human male and wished to Make him in her image, as Esher had Made her in his. But he became jealous of the attention she lavished on the young man, and killed him before she could turn him into one of the undead. Enraged, Darcy openly challenged him to a duel, just as Gabor had done. So he destroyed her. When she screamed for the last time, her voice was as pure and strong as it had been the night he first saw her, singing for pennies.
It was a long time before he took another consort. When he first met Decima, she was a grubby little hippie chick; a deeply troubled young girl from a middle-class suburban family looking for something she could not describe, even to herself. Under his ministrations she blossomed from a flower child into a child of the night. But Esher had learned his lesson with Darcy, and when he Made his new bride in his image, she did not enter the eternal world an equal. And for a decade or three he was satisfied by her company.
Until he saw Nikola.
Something about the way she moved when she danced triggered a possessive madness in him he hadn’t felt since he heard Darcy singing in the Bowery. Perhaps there was something in those touched by the muse that resonated with him—much like his friendship with the poet. But no. That would imply weakness. Regret. And a Noble of the Ruling Class may never know such things. Or so he told himself.
Better to busy his mind with other, more pressing business, such as how to repair the damage done by last night’s misadventures. He would have to move quickly if he was to secure his position against Sinjon and the others of the Ruling Class. However, he had crafted numerous spells and blood contracts over the years, and he was not without his friends in low places. While he might not be able to overthrow the governing body of Nobles, he had no doubt that he could successfully defy it.
His original plan of acting as a mercenary force for the Borges Brothers was now completely ruined. He had intended to present the druglords with the stolen narcotics as a gesture of good faith, but still, even with his potential partners dead, five kilos of cocaine was not without its uses. He could easily convert it to pay for more weapons and ammunition. After all, incendiary bullets did not come cheap, even in volume.
He walked over to the alcove hidden by the beaded curtain and took out the Chinese Box. Esher lifted the lid opened the box, and found himself looking an empty cavity—empty, that is, save for a lace hanky. He did not need to sniff its scent to guess the identity of its owner. The Masonic symbol embroidered in lieu of a monogram told him to whom it belonged. Esher’s rage was so immense it manifested as the utmost calm
There was a knock on his door and Decima entered the room, the wound dealt her face by the brat’s crucifix still raw and angry red. “Milord, the Batmobile’s been repaired, as you commanded.”
“Excellent. Bring Lady Nikola to me I would like the brood to assemble tonight!”
; Decima raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Again?”
“Do not question me!” he snapped. “Just do it! Put out the word!”
“As you wish, milord,” she said, quickly withdrawing.
Esher strode through the contorted halls in the direction of the audience chamber. Upon his entrance, a thin, nondescript vampire with lank hair and the clothes of an office worker awaited him, fidgeting nervously.
“Yes, what is it—?” he growled.
“We, uh, we finally located Orgot, milord.”
“Indeed,” he sighed as he dropped into his chair of office. “And what the old wino’s excuse for being gone these last few days?”
“He’s dead, milord.”
“Of course he’s dead!” Esher snapped. “He’s one of us!”
“No, milord—I mean Truly Dead. We found what was left of him stuffed under a sofa in the barracks. There wasn’t much left, but it looks like silver poisoning.”
Esher leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed in thought. What was it that Gabor had told him before his own destruction about nursing a serpent at his bosom?
The doors to the audience chamber flew open and a highly agitated Decima ran in, holding aloft black roses tied with a purple satin ribbon. “Milord! Sinjon has taken your bride!”
“What!?!” Esher thundered as he shot to his feet.
“I went to pick up Nikola, as you requested—but all the Pointers assigned to guard the safe house are dead. So is Obeah—with the back of his head blown off. Nikola is missing—and these were left on her bed!”
“A dozen black roses has been the calling card for brood war amongst the Ruling Class for centuries,” Esher said, taking the bouquet from his lieutenant’s hand. “Sinjon is the one who hurled down the gauntlet—not I! He is the aggressor—I am merely protecting myself!”
“I also found this while I was there,” Decima said, displaying a neatly severed left pinkie. “It was under Obeah’s body.” She held them out to Esher, who took the finger and sniffed it like a fine cigar before licking the bloody stump.
“I know this blood,” he scowled. “It belongs to the one called Sonja.”
“That explains why the door to the safe house wasn’t forced. Obeah opened it of his own free will because he recognized her! I told you that mirror-eyed bitch was going to be trouble!”
As much as he was loath to admit it, Decima was right. Sonja was the last one to see Orgot “alive”; she was the one left alone in the stronghold when he went to parlay with the Borges Brothers; she was the one who had supposedly destroyed the old man and the boy. He wondered how she spirited Nikola away so close to sunrise; apparently she was far more resourceful than even he had realized.
Esher carefully wrapped the severed finger in the lace hanky. When he finished he looked up to find Decima awaiting his orders like an eager hound. “Bring Sonja to me,” he said. His voice was very, very calm.
Decima licked her lips, displaying both her fangs and the surgical steel piercing in her tongue. “As you command, sire.”
As Sonja rolled off the filthy mattress in the attic and cursed her altruistic streak. Reuniting Ryan with his mother had not been part of her original plan—and now it was costing her. She glanced down at her wounded hand. Her pinkie still looked like a well-used eraser—the end result of not getting enough sleep to regenerate properly. She knew she was pushing herself too hard—but she had no alternative.
A little fresh blood would help work wonders and give her back that all-important edge. She could either prey on one of the myriad gang members wandering Deadtown, or avail herself of the feeders at Dance Macabre. While the second option was considerably easier, she could not bring herself to do such a thing. She wasn’t like those giggling monsters flocking to Esher’s banner. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. But then—she had his blood inside her, now. That’s probably why she even contemplated using the feeders in the first place.
By now Esher would know of Nikola’s disappearance. The bouquet of black roses—the ritual signature of open warfare between Nobles—was all the proof he would needed to blame Sinjon. She had no doubt one of the two vampires would wipe the other out, saving her the trouble of having to tackle both without them forming an alliance against her. It was far easier to dispose of them as separate, squabbling entities than as a unified force.
She climbed out an attic window that overlooked the alley, creeping down the face of the building like a black leather lizard. Careful to remain in the deepest shadows, she hurried along until she came to The Street With No Name. It would be easy enough to lure one of the Pointers away on some pretense or another. Despite their much-vaunted macho, the gang members were submissive to any vampire that approached them. Like most humans drawn to serve the darker powers, they wanted the flame for their own, yet did not want to burn in order to claim it.
She spotted three Pointers halfway up the street and quickened her pace. One of the youths noticed her approach and nodded in her direction to his companions. The one with his back to her tossed his cigarette aside and reached for something tucked in the front of his pants. Sonja was already lunging to the side as he began to turn, rolling as she hit the pavement as the Pointer spun and fired his 9mm, holding it to the side so that the spent cartridges flew away from him. She came out of her roll crouched low, snarling like a cornered wildcat, her fangs bared. The shooter looked at his now-empty gun, swallowed, and took a step backward. With an angry growl, she pounced, taking him down hard enough to snap his back. His remaining friends stared in stunned surprise as she crouched atop the body before one of them scrambled to grab the gun jutting from his own waistband. Sonja came up off the sidewalk like a jack-in-the-box, ramming her skull deep into his solar plexus. The third Pointer managed to get a shot off, only to shoot his friend instead. Sonja delivered a side kick that knocked the gun from his hand, followed by a forward snap kick that put the steel toe of her boot into his abdomen with enough force to rupture his spleen. As she stopped to survey the mayhem and pick a donor for her evening repast, something slammed her against a nearby brick wall. She tried to move, but couldn’t. She looked down at her right side and saw the last few inches of a crossbow bolt jutting from her flesh, pinning her like a butterfly.
“Esher wants to see you,” Decima said as she casually strode from the shadows of a nearby alley.
“Tough shit. I don’t want to see him,” Sonja grunted as she tugged on the arrow piercing her side. The shaft was slippery with blood and less readily identifiable ichor, making it hard for her to get a secure grip. The pain was enough to push her to the edge of consciousness with every yank.
“Oh, you’re going to see him, all right,” Decima replied, leveling the loaded crossbow directly at Sonja’s head. “Even if it’s the last thing you do.”
There was pain in her shoulders and her side. Good. That meant she wasn’t dead yet. Sonja opened first one eye, then the other. She was in a room with thick stone walls and no windows, suspended from the ceiling by her wrists, the toes of her boots barely scraping the floor. Her leather jacket and sunglasses had been removed. She did not know where she was and had no memory of being transported there. The last thing she recalled was Decima yanking the arrow free of her mid-section, and the wave of accompanying agony that had brought her to her knees. She also had a not-so-dim memory of Decima giving her a good, swift kick to the head for good measure.
“Looks like our little traitor is coming around,” Esher said. The vampire lord leaned against the metal door that was the sole means of entering the cell, studying her like a man who had found a roach in his breakfast cereal.
“Cozy little dungeon you got here,” Sonja grunted as she spat out a mouthful of blood. “You ought to dress it up a bit with some skeletons and rubber bats, though, for that extra-spooky Mall Goth look.”
There was the sound of something cutting through the air, followe
d by an explosion of pain at the base of her spine. Sonja’s fangs clicked together, slicing her tongue to ribbons. A moment later Decima circled around to stand in front of her, twirling a piece of rebar in one hand like a cheerleader’s baton.
“Do you recognize the length of metal Decima is holding?” Esher asked. His voice was surprisingly pleasant, as if he was chatting about the weather or his favorite TV show. “It’s the same one Obeah used as a cane. I thought you’d appreciate the irony.”
“Yeah, you’re a regular Oscar Wilde,” she replied around the blood dribbling from her lips.
Decima moved to deliver another blow, but Esher stopped her with a small wave of his hand. He stepped forward so that he was inches from Sonja’s battered face. At such close physical proximity, Sonja could feel Esher’s blood within her stir, giving her a small thrill, like the touch of a lover.
“You disappoint me, my dear,” he said, looking into her unshielded eyes. “I thought you had better sense than to back a loser like Sinjon.”
“I told you she was not to be trusted,” Decima growled. “I smelled trouble on her from the very start.”
“I bow to your intuitiveness in this instance,” Esher said with a gracious nod to his lieutenant. “I allowed myself to be swayed by a pretty face and the fact that I so desperately need followers of a higher caliber than I usually get. This worthless sow has betrayed my confidence and will pay the price for doing so. But first I need answers—ones that only she can give. Then you are free to do with her as you wish.”
The vampire lord moved even closer, his eyes glowing like those of a wild animal prowling near a campfire as he pressed his mind against hers. Esher’s willpower radiated from him like heat from an open oven, and, for a brief moment, Sonja felt her resolve begin to weaken. It would be so easy to tell him the truth. To give him what he wanted…
Suddenly something dark stirred deep inside her, like a great beast rising from the farthest depths of the ocean. Sonja realized that Esher’s attempt to force her will had awoken The Other. The sensation that accompanied its approach was a familiar one to her. And, up until now, it had always been unwelcome.
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