Books 1–4

by Nancy A. Collins

  Esher tried to drag himself away, but he found he was far too frail to even move. Where once, minutes before, had been a powerfully built, virile man, now there was a rail-thin ancient with jaundiced, liver-spotted skin and thinning white hair.

  “What are you?” he rasped with a voice as dry as Egyptian parchment.

  “There’s more than one kind of vampire, you know,” she replied. “I’m the kind who feeds on the blood of vampires.”

  Esher lifted a bony hand to his eyes to blot out the sight of his doom as Sonja pulled him into a brutal parody of a lover’s embrace, her face pressed close to his. He flinched at the sight of her exposed fangs.

  “You should feel honored, Esher,” she smiled. “You’re only the second vampire I have consumed. My first was my own sire. And, I may add, you taste much better.”

  “Please, let me go! I’ll give you anything you want!”

  “Will you let Eddie leave Deadtown unharmed?”

  “Yes! Of course!”

  “Will you leave Nikola and Ryan alone?”

  “I swear by my blood I’ll never seek her out again!”

  Sonja loosened her grip, studying the vampire lord’s aged features. “You know what, Esher?” she said. “You’re one lying son-of-a-bitch.” Her fangs drove into his jugular like a tap into a keg. The blood that flowed from him was thick and dark and tasted sweeter than any she’d ever known. Esher flailed his arms and legs against her in a futile attempt to break free as his lips turned black and pulled away from his gums in a hideous rictus grin. His skin flaked away in large sheets, while his hair, nails and teeth loosened from their moorings and fell away like autumn leaves. Esher’s shrieks climbed into the ultrasonic register, until they sounded like the pips and squeals of a bat, as his eyes retreated into their sockets.

  Sonja halted feeding to blink and look around at her surroundings. The interior of the audience chamber was ablaze, the tapestries that covered the walls inadvertently ignited by burning vampires. But the fire could not account for what she’d felt—as if The House of Esher had just shrugged.

  “What’s going on—?”

  “My magics—” Esher whispered, his voice that of a very old, very sick man. “My magics are tied to my life force … without me to sustain them, they can no longer keep the House stable…. You are standing in a house of cards … and you … have just removed … the king …”

  The house shuddered again, and this time a two-foot-wide crack appeared in the floor of the audience chamber. Sonja let Esher drop and moved to retrieve Eddie, who lay unconscious at the foot of the vampire lord’s throne.

  As she moved past Esher, his useless legs twisted beneath him like gnarled sticks, the Noble reached out and tried to grab at her pants leg.

  “Don’t leave me here!” he begged. “Deadtown is yours! Just take me with you!”

  “You can keep your fuckin’ Deadtown,” she replied as she tossed Eddie over her back in a fireman’s carry. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ll show myself out.”

  There was a rumbling from deep within the building and the House jerked as if it were being pulled in three separate directions at the same time. Sonja nimbly sidestepped a fissure that opened up underneath her, pausing only long enough to snatch up her dropped switchblade.

  “No! Don’t leave me here alone—!” Esher cried, his voice lost in the cacophony of the House tearing itself apart. There was the sound of a metal cable snapping, and Esher looked up to see the stained-glass window suspended over the dais swinging back-and-forth overhead, like the pendulum from the poet’s story. His last thought, before the half-ton of metal and colored leaded glass came crashing down on his skull, was of Darcy.

  Sonja kicked open the doors to the audience chamber and staggered into the hallway. If the House of Esher had been hell to navigate while its master was in control, it was now utter chaos. The walls were bleeding and the doors moved about on spindly, lobster-like legs, their knobs extended on long antennae. The carpet underneath her feet was made from fresh, hot tar. She gritted her teeth in pain and slogged onward, doing her best to ignore the things skittering about on the edge of her vision.

  She rounded a corner and saw a clot of Pointers mired up to their waists in the hallway like roaches in a glue trap. She looked away as the corridor convulsed, slamming its hapless captives against the ceiling like a hydraulic press. Suddenly the floor beneath her feet was solid again, although now the carpet runner was writhing like an anaconda. She swore under her breath and tightened her grip on Eddie as she stepped up her pace. There was another housequake, followed by the sound of timbers giving way. A second later she narrowly dodged a rafter as it crashed its way to the basement. There was a gout of plaster and crumbling masonry, and suddenly she found herself outside without the aid of a door—the wall in front of her had simply disintegrated.

  Sonja staggered across the street, fearful of being struck at any moment by a toppling chimney or buried under an avalanche of brick. Once she was safely away, she lowered Eddie to the ground and turned to watch the fall of the House of Esher.

  She was reminded of a magic act she’d once seen where the magician had taken a cabinet the size of a car and repeatedly folded it until it was the size of a child’s suitcase—except that the magic cabinet hadn’t made a fraction of the noise as the House of Esher. The sounds of masonry being ground to dust and glass shattering did nothing to drown the screams coming from within the convulsing building. Although she glimpsed a couple of bloodied figures leaping from the upper windows to the rocky ground below, it seemed that most of Esher’s followers, both human and vampire, remained trapped inside. There was a long, guttural groan—like the song of a whale heard underwater—and the House of Esher finally disappeared in a mushroom cloud of grit and plaster dust. In its place was an empty lot. Sonja noticed that wherever the House had gone, it had apparently taken its catacombs with it, since the patch of ground beneath it was perfectly flat.

  “Well, thank goodness that’s taken care of,” she muttered as she picked Eddie up again. The older man’s breathing sounded funny—she needed to get him to a hospital, and fast. She noticed the Batmobile sitting at the curb, and opened the driver’s door and scanned the interior. The keys were still hanging in the ignition. No doubt the driver was dripping off the ceiling in whatever hell-dimension the House had returned to. She opened the back door and carefully laid Eddie across the seat. The old hippie’s good eye flickered open and his body went rigid.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re safe now.”

  “I didn’t tell him where they are,” Eddie mumbled through what was left of his teeth.

  “I didn’t think you would,” she smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Eddie lay in his hospital bed, his left leg freshly slathered in plaster and hanging suspended from a sling. His right shoulder blade and arm were also newly mummified, supported by a metal strut that held his arm out at a jaunty angle. His beard and hair had been washed clean of blood and vomit, and the swelling on the left side of his face had gone down enough so he could open his eye. He sat in the dark, sipping apple juice through a straw, watching the TV with the sound off. The curtain that separated his side of the room from that of his roommate’s was pulled shut, in a futile attempt at privacy.

  “Eddie.”

  “Jesus fuck!” he yelped, spilling his apple juice.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Sonja said as she stepped out of the shadows.

  “At least I’m in the right place for a heart attack,” he muttered ruefully.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “What did the doctors say?”

  “That I’m fuckin’ lucky I still have both eyes, for one thing. I’m also going to have to be fitted for dentures, but there’s no sign of brain damage. At least none they can relate to the beating, anyway.”

  “What did you tell them?” />
  “That I was mugged,” he said with a shrug. “Which is kind of the truth, once you think about it.” He tilted his head and fixed her with a quizzical look. “I wasn’t expectin’ to see you again. Why’d you come back?”

  “I thought you might like something to read while you recovered.” She stepped forward and placed the massive Oxford English Dictionary on the night table beside him.

  “Thanks. I appreciate the thought,” Eddie said with a crooked smile.

  “You’ll need it once they discharge you. Deadtown is no more, Eddie. Don’t try to go back. In couple years it’ll be an urban shopping plaza or a new business development.”

  “Where do you suggest I go?”

  “I hear San Luis Obispo is nice.” The old hippie smiled, exposing his newly naked gums. “I gotcha. Thanks.”

  As she turned to leave, Eddie called out to her one last time.

  “Before you go—you mind telling me your last name?”

  Sonja paused, her silhouette etched against the privacy curtain. It was too dark for him to make out whether she was smiling or not.

  “It’s Blue. Sonja Blue,” she answered. “Goodbye, Eddie.”

  The patient on the other side of the curtain groaned and muttered something in his sleep. Eddie glanced in his direction to make sure they weren’t being overheard. When he looked back, she was gone.

  Sonja yawned, stretched, and cracked her knuckles while she steered with her knees. The Batmobile barreled down the highway like its proverbial namesake. She glanced into the rearview mirror, watching the lights of the city dwindle behind her.

  Where to next?

  She’d heard rumors about a vampire coven in Detroit, living in the rotting buildings and factories downtown. And there were some pretty gnarly stories coming out of New Orleans, about a nasty infestation in the abandoned neighborhoods left behind by Katrina. She decided she would pick her next destination in the usual way.

  Without taking her eyes from the road, she popped open the glove compartment and fished out her Magic Eightball. After a vigorous shake, she flipped it over and waited for the twenty-sided die to float its answer through the murky blue dye. She grunted and returned the Magic Eightball to its compartment.

  The Big Easy it is.

  She punched the eject button on the Batmobile’s sound system and removed the rap CD, tossing it out the driver’s-side window. She then retrieved another CD from inside her jacket and deftly inserted it into the empty slot. The distorted shriekback of Diamanda Galas’ Madwomen With Steak Knives came pouring from the Batmobile’s suitcase-sized speakers.

  At last, music she could relate to.

  About the Author

  Nancy A. Collins has authored over twenty novels and novellas and numerous short stories, and worked on several comic books, including a two-year run on Swamp Thing. She is a recipient of the HWA’s Bram Stoker Award and the British Fantasy Society Award, and has been nominated for the Eisner, John Campbell Memorial, and World Fantasy International Horror Guild Awards. Best known for her groundbreaking vampire series Sonja Blue, which heralded the rise of the popular urban fantasy genre, Collins is the author of the bestselling Sunglasses After Dark, the Southern Gothic collection Knuckles and Tales, and the Vamps series for young adults. Her most recent novel is Left Hand Magic, the second installment in the critically acclaimed Golgotham urban fantasy series. She currently resides in Norfolk, Virginia, with a Boston terrier.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Sunglasses After Dark copyright © 2012 by Nancy A. Collins

  In the Blood copyright © by Nancy A. Collins

  Paint It Black copyright © 2013 Nancy A. Collins

  A Dozen Black Roses copyright © 2011 by Nancy A. Collins

  Cover design by Itzy Ramirez

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-4960-3

  This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

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