Chapter Fourteen
Palmer was well into his second pack of Shermans when Sonja reemerged from the undergrowth. He was surprised to find himself glad to see her.
He got up from where he'd been squatting in the shade, the binoculars' eyepieces capped. He had stopped studying Ghost Trap shortly after Sonja entered the building. He didn't like the reverberations the house kicked up in his hindbrain. He grinned a welcome to his partner.
"It's about time you got back! I was starting to get worried. There's only an hour or two before it gets dark. So, did you off the bastard?"
"Get in the car."
"You did kill him, didn't you? I mean, we're not going to have to worry about some heavyweight bogeyman coming down on our asses, are we?"
"We'll talk about it later, Palmer."
His smile faltered. "You didn't do it."
"I said we'll talk about it later!"
Palmer ground out his smoldering cigarette with a sharp twist of his heel. "I should have known," he muttered as he crawled behind the wheel. "I should have fuckin' known."
The Pink Motel provided the only lodging in El Pajaro, a tiny hamlet of three thousand souls. Palmer scowled at the sign fronting the parking lot - a Tinkerbelle clone hovered over the garish tubing spelling out the motel's name. The glowing end of the neon fairy's magic wand dotted the i in the word pink.
He looked up as Sonja returned from the registration desk, sliding into the passenger seat next to him. She held up a piece of pink plastic with a key dangling from its end.
"Room Twenty. I told him we were a honeymooning couple and didn't want to bother the other guests."
"No problem there," Palmer commented dryly, scanning the empty gravel parking lot. He put the car into gear and drove to the end of the twenty-unit motor court. The exterior of the long, L-shaped building was an aged pink stucco the color of well-chewed bubble gum.
The inside of the room was no better. The walls were a pale bisque, while the carpet looked, and felt, like dirty cotton candy.
"It's like I'm in the belly of a huge snake." Palmer groaned, eyeing the worn chenille spread covering the queen-size mattress.
Sonja grunted and stared at the picture hanging over the bed. It was a cheap flea market print of a Keane waif with huge eyes and a tiny mouth set into a simpering pout. Snorting in disgust, Sonja yanked the offending artwork off the wall and sailed it into a corner. She flopped heavily onto the bed. The box springs squealed in protest.
Palmer was surprised by how tired she looked. In the week since their lives had merged, Palmer had come to think of her as preternaturally energetic. She was definitely the most intense woman he'd ever known. The sight of her sprawled across the bed sparked a vague lust in him.
"I feel so old sometimes." Sonja lifted a hand to her brow, slowly rubbing her forehead. "So horribly, horribly old. And I'm not even forty yet." Her laugh was dry. "I wonder how the truly ancient ones feel? Vampires like Pangloss. They must be so very tired. I've heard that when they grow weary of continuing, they simply go to sleep. A hibernation that lasts for years, decades. Sleep: the stepchild of Death." Her voice had a smoky, far-away feel to it. Palmer wondered if she was aware she was speaking aloud.
He sat next to her on the bed and stared at the worn carpet between his shoes. "Sonja - what happened in that house?"
"I discovered I'm not alone."
"What?"
In a soft, weary voice she told him about Anise and Fell and Morgan's plan to breed his own race of designer-gene vampires.
"And you left them there? Alive?"
"You don't understand, Palmer..."
"You're damn right I don't understand! Why didn't you kill them?"
"I couldn't."
"Wouldn't, you mean!"
"No. Couldn't." Sonja removed her sunglasses, exposing her eyes to him for the first time. "I don't fully understand it myself. I used to think I could reclaim what I once was by killing what I'd become. It didn't work. Maybe it's time for me to build instead of destroy. I've been lonely, Palmer. So terribly lonely."
Palmer forced himself to look into her eyes. She silently stiffened, squaring her shoulders in preparation for rejection. The pupils were huge, dilated to maximize even the feeblest light source. They were the eyes of a hybrid, neither human or vampire. At first he was repulsed by how raw and inhuman they'd looked, but now he could see a perverse beauty in them. Even without touching her mind, he knew how much of herself she'd exposed to him simply by removing her glasses.
He kissed her without really knowing why, yet confident the action was genuinely his. His hands slipped under her shirt, his fingers tracing old wounds. She arched her back and moaned in pleasure. The way she stretched her lithe, tight body reminded him of the panthers at the zoo - so beautiful and so deadly with their predator's grace.
Her flesh was pale, marked by numerous scars. He closed his eyes and ran his hands over her naked torso. He had expected to be repulsed by the sensation, but found himself fascinated by the complex designs. It was like reading Braille; each scar a story bonded forever to her flesh.
She helped him out of his clothes, her fingers tracing the scar over his heart. Palmer felt a tremor of apprehension in the back of his mind, as memories of Loli's betrayal surfaced then disappeared.
She closed around him like a velvet fist. Her arms and legs wrapped about his, holding him fast. He knew he could not break free of her embrace, but he felt no urge to escape. If she had wanted to force this upon him, she could have done it long ago.
Her mind reached out and touched his, teasing it from its cage of bone. She laughed, a telepathic bird song echoing inside his head, as she urged him to surrender both body and mind to passion.
As he shucked his skin, the jungle surged behind his eyelids. He saw a beautiful woman with intricate ritual designs scratched into her cheeks and brow smiling at him. The smell of burning copal filled his nostrils. Then he was free of his flesh, their minds twining together like mating snakes.
He could not see her, but he knew Sonja was there, both within and outside him. It was a delicious feeling, one that transcended the human physical vocabulary. It went beyond any sensations he'd ever derived from sex or drugs or any form of carnal gratification. He experienced the raw essence of orgasm, cut free of biological imperative - the promised reward of the faithful of Islam: the thousand-year climax. Or at least ten minutes' worth.
Suddenly he was back in his body, rutting like a bull in heat. Sonja convulsed under him, thrusting her pelvis against his with bruising urgency. His shoulders stung and something warm trickled over his bare skin. The sight and smell of his blood dripping from her fingernails stoked his lust even higher. Sonja arched her back, her muscles as taut as bowstrings, and yowled like a cat. Her lips pulled back in a rictus grin as she bared her fangs. Palmer groaned as her contractions milked him dry.
He lay atop her, sweat and blood drying on his back, and smoothed the hair away from her face. There were no words. None were needed. He studied the tilt of her cheekbones and the shape of her nose in the failing daylight filtering through the rose-colored curtains. As he drifted into sleep, it occurred to him that this was the first time he hadn't needed a smoke after sex.
The room was in deep shadow and someone was banging on the door. Sonja moved with the speed and agility of an animal, untangling herself from their lover's embrace. She moved so fast he didn't even see her slip her glasses back on.
Palmer yanked on his pants and moved to answer the door, minus his shirt and shoes. He glimpsed Sonja out of the corner of his eye, moving along the baseboard like a tiger preparing to pounce. The sight of her muscles coiling and uncoiling underneath her moon-pale skin inspired a brief rush of lust.
He opened the door the width of the safety chain and peered out at a small-boned African-American woman shivering in the dark. Now that the sun was down, the air had a bite to it.
"Whattayawant ? "
The woman tossed back her braids and looked him directly in the face. Her pupils were inhumanly large. The eyes of a hybrid. "I need to see Sonja."
"It's okay, Palmer. Let her in." Sonja was standing at his elbow. She'd moved so quietly he wasn't aware she was behind him until she spoke.
Palmer opened the door and Anise hurried in. She wore the same loose cotton dress she'd had on earlier that afternoon, only now there were dark, tulip-shaped stains on its front.
Sonja motioned for Palmer to keep watch at the window before pulling on her Circle Jerks T-shirt. "Where's Fell?"
Anise shook her head, causing her braids to sway. "It went bad. Real bad! Worse than I thought it would. I'm lucky I got away at all." She started pacing back and forth. The way she waddled and wrung her hands while she spoke made Sonja think of a worried penguin.
"What happened?"
"I went back and tried to talk to him, like I said I would. It was impossible! It was like his ears were sealed with wax. I told him that I didn't love him - that it was impossible for me to care for him. I wasn't going to be Morgan's brood bitch anymore! He tried to keep me from leaving. I ended up hitting him with one of the fire tools. There was a lot of blood. I tied him up and stuffed him in one of the closets. While I was busy doing that, I was surprised by one of Morgan's renfields. I..." She grimaced in distaste. "I killed him with my bare hands."
"How do you feel about that?"
Anise stopped her pacing and took a deep breath. "It was easy. Too easy."
"And?"
"It felt good." She shuddered. "Sweet Jesus, what am I turning into? What did that bastard do to me?"
Sonja did not answer. She looked at Anise's face and wondered what she could possibly say to make the fear go away. She was also curious as to how long it would be before Anise's version of the Other would make itself known. Or was it already active, ready for more murder and mayhem?
It had been so long since Sonja had last imagined herself truly human. Sometimes her life as Denise Thorne seemed little more than a pleasant, if vivid, dream. She imagined how it must have been for Anise to wake up and find herself not only married to a man she didn't love and pregnant against her will, but no longer human. Sonja was humbled by her sister's underlying strength.
"Think you're up to a three-hour drive to San Francisco?"
"What choice do I have? We sure as hell can't stay here. Morgan no doubt already has his dogs out looking for me. I'm ready when you - uh-oh."
"What do you mean 'uh-oh'?"
Anise grimaced. "I think I spoke too soon."
Palmer turned away from the window. He looked like he'd just swallowed a lemon. "Does she mean what I think she means?"
Anise emitted a groan as her water broke.
"I'm afraid so," sighed Sonja.