Chapter Twenty-One
Sonja followed the trail of blood to the library, where Morgan was waiting for her. She felt him as a Siamese twin senses its sibling's moods and health. It was a dreadful, unwanted intimacy, and it made her want to retch.
"My child."
The library door opened of its own volition. A strange, flickering light the color of a ripe bruise spilled into the hallway.
"Come forward, child. So I may look at you."
The voice was familiar, although it lacked the upper-class British accent it had possessed when she'd first heard it in 1969.
She took a hesitant step into the purple-black light, shielding herself as best as she could from the siren song of his personality.
Morgan stood in front of a mammoth fireplace, dressed in a neatly tailored dinner jacket and matching pants. His hair was bound in a ponytail by a black velvet cord. His smile was brilliant as he studied her over the top of his aviator glasses.
The Other's voice hissed a warning from its place inside her head: Don't be fooled by the surface. You 're no longer a sixteen-year-old debutante. Look beyond the illusion. See him for what he truly is!
Sonja's vision flickered as she shifted spectrums. Morgan's image warped and twisted like a piece of cellophane held too close to a light bulb. His flesh lost its sun worshipper's glow, fading until it resembled a mushroom coated with tallow. His fingernails were long and curled, like those of a mandarin, and the gases of cellular decay bloated his features. The smell that emanated from him reminded her of the dead mouse she'd once found lodged in an old sofa bed. The very thought of this putrescent monstrosity thrusting its rancid member into her was enough to make her gorge rise, twenty years after the fact.
The Other thought that it would be a really good idea to pluck Morgan's eyes out and use his head for a bowling ball. Sonja agreed but continued to fight the rage boiling inside her. She hated the leering monster who'd raped and tortured her so many years ago - in truth, she'd cultivated that hate in order to face her day-to-day existence - but this was not the time to indulge her loathing.
Sonja knew the immensity of her hate, knew what it could do once unleashed. She had sworn she'd never allow herself to lose control again. Not like last year. She could never forget the lives she'd destroyed and the souls she'd shattered that night.
"Should I say 'so, we meet at last,' and get the cliches out of the way?" suggested Morgan, his handsome, debonair visage once more securely in place.
"Do you know who I am?" She had to fight to keep the tremor from her voice.
"I know that you call yourself Sonja Blue. Or perhaps you mean, do I recognize you?" Morgan's lips curled into a cruel smile. "Do you have any idea how many hapless, silly human girls I have seduced in the last six hundred years, my dear? And you expect me to remember one out of that multitude?"
"My... her name was Denise Thorne. London, 1969."
The vampire nodded, as if this answered something. "Ah, yes! The heiress! You were actually missed. Careless of me. Even more careless that I didn't make sure you were truly dead when I disposed of you. I blame the sixties for that. It was such a happy-go-lucky, irresponsible era! I found it quite contagious. Didn't you?"
"Cut the routine, dead boy! You know why I'm here."
Morgan sighed and studied his fingernails. "I know! I know! You're here to kill me. How tedious. Tell me, child, what exactly would my demise prove?"
"That I'm not like you."
"Indeed? If you are not like me, how have you survived these past few decades, little one? How have you kept yourself fed?"
"I - I have my ways."
"Caches of bottled plasma, no doubt. But that is hardly enough, is it? You can't lie to me, child. I know how bland prepackaged blood can be. Have you killed, my pet?"
"I - "
"Answer me true, child."
"Yes."
Morgan smiled a slow, sly smile. Sonja fought the urge to rip it off his face. "How many have you taken down? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds? Thousands?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Ha!" Morgan laughed, the smile widening into a smirk. "And you say you aren't like me!"
"I am not one of your kind!"
"That is true. You aren't like us. Nor are you, in many ways, like your dear, departed siblings. If only Fell and Anise had turned out half as well as you. But perhaps that's what I get for choosing flawed templates. Still, it's a shame to destroy something so... unique. You remind me of something I once saw in a vision, fifty years ago - "
" - in a Gestapo torture-house in occupied Amsterdam."
Morgan's look of smug self-assurance faltered. "How do you know of that?"
Sonja smiled mockingly, pleased by the look of confusion on his face. "There are places where the future and the past blur, provided one has the eyes to see.
The window worked both ways, Morgan. I saw you, dressed in your SS colonel's uniform. And you saw your death, separated from you by time and space."
He was inside her head, fast as a striking" cobra. Sonja tensed as Morgan's will crashed against her own, like a wave breaking against a high cliff. As the pressure inside her skull increased, she was dimly aware of something warm and sticky flowing from her nostrils. Impressed by her show of strength, Morgan withdrew with a low, bemused chuckle. He tilted his head to one side, studying her closely from behind his aviator shades.
"Why are we fighting, child? Is this how father and daughter greet one another?"
Sonja wiped at the blood oozing from her nose and mouth. "You're not my father!" she spat.
"I made you, child! You are shaped in my image! We are bonded! There is no denying me! We are much alike, you and I. You have more in common with me than you ever did with Anise and Fell. They were weak. Flawed. Unworthy vessels. They could not surrender the illusion of humanity."
He held up his left hand, dragging the nail of his right thumb across his palm. A black, polluted liquid gushed forth. "Honor thy father, Sonja! Look into yourself and you'll find me there - it's in the blood!"
She felt it then, the relentless pressure of his will bearing down on her like a leaden weight. It was as if she'd been suddenly transported to the bottom of the ocean floor. The temptation to capitulate was intense. It would be so easy to surrender and allow him to fill the void inside her. She dropped to her knees, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. Blackish-purple solar systems went nova behind her eyes.
Breathe! Breathe, damn you! shrieked the Other.
Morgan moved closer, smiling down at her like a punishing parent. "You are beautiful. I like beautiful things." His handsome, male model features shivered, ran, turned into a worm-eaten ruin. "You are also very, very dangerous. I like that, too. In you I see elements of my younger self-angry, volatile, scheming, defiant. I find this similarity... arousing." He gestured with one corpselike hand to the knot in his pants.
"Humans are always prattling on about love. I know nothing of that. I do know of hunger, need, want. You have awakened a hunger in me, my beauty. The hunger of a moth for a flame, the mongoose for the cobra. I have spent centuries exploiting the weaknesses of others, only to discover a frailty in myself. I cannot allow this. It imperils my continuance. But, still, I can not help but be fascinated - "
The vampire lifted a hand smelling of graveyard mold and touched her cheek. His skin was dead and cold against her own. Sonja closed her eyes and saw a young girl, naked and bleeding, struggling to wriggle free of the red-eyed demon pinning her to the back seat of the car. She heard her screams as he emptied burning semen into her battered womb. She heard him laugh as the girl's pulse fluttered and dimmed under his cold, cold hands.
The Other's sibilant voice snarled in her inner ear:
Twenty years! You've been hunting this bastard for twenty yeas, living just to kill him! To pay him back for what he did to you! And what are you doing? You're cringing like a damned whipped dog offering up its throat! You came all this way to die at his hands? Let me out! Let me out, woman, before he kills us all!
"You're trembling..." His voice was a husky whisper, close to her ear. His breath billowed out in a mildewed cloud.
"Don't touch me!" The switchblade was in her hand as she struck him, slicing air and decayed flesh in a single, powerful arc.
Morgan shrieked and recoiled from her, clutching the left side of his face. A thick, yellowish fluid welled between his fingers. "Silver! Silver!" His voice cracked, climbing the register. "You hurt me!" He sounded like a petulant toddler.
The sight of her enemy's pain was good. Very good. "I'm not one of your pedigreed lap dogs, Morgan! I was born in the gutter and raised on the street! And I like raw meat!"
There was a hysterical gleam in Morgan's remaining eye. How long? How long had it been since he'd known pain? Not the temporary discomfort of snapped limbs and ruptured tissue, but real pain? The kind only immortal flesh is heir to. The realization that he'd been badly - and permanently - scarred both angered and thrilled him.
"I was going to let you live, changeling!" he hissed. "Maimed and lobotomized, true. But still alive. Not now, bitch!" His voice dropped, becoming an inhuman growl. "Not now!"
Morgan threw wide his arms, and his remaining eye rolled back in its socket. Although she'd never battled a Noble before, Sonja recognized the ritual stance used in psychic combat. She followed suit, falling inside herself in time to meet Morgan on a field of battle known only as the Place Between Places.
There was darkness and light, and at the same time, neither. There was up and down in all directions. Morgan's imago hung suspended in midair, its features unmarred, dressed in the flowing silks and samite of a medieval Florentine prince. His eyes burned like polished garnet and flames licked from between his lips. His hands were turned palm upward, each cupping a ball of black energy that smoldered like malignant St. Elmo's Fire.
"Is that the best you can do, prodigal?" he sneered contemptuously, motioning to his opponent's self-image.
Sonja looked down at herself. Except for her leather jacket looking brand-new, there was no appreciable difference between her imago and her physical self. "What matter does it make ? We 're all naked inside our heads. "
As if in reply, a tiger with three heads and the tail of a scorpion jumped out of Morgan's chest. Sparks flew from its myriad sets of gnashing teeth as its heads roared in unison. It pounced, knocking Sonja onto her back.
As the chimera's fangs closed on its victim's face, the Other began to laugh.
Howell and Palmer watched as the lock on laboratory door began to glow, becoming white-hot within a heartbeat. The odor of roasting pork was strong enough to make Palmer's gut growl.
"Is there another way out of here?" he snapped at Howell.
The scientist nodded, unable to take his eyes from the door. "There's a trapdoor that leads to the nucleus." He motioned to the dissection table pushed against the wall.
"Then what are we waiting on?" Palmer grabbed Howell's arm. "If that's what I think it is, you don't want to be here to tell it hello!"
Howell pulled away from Palmer, shaking his head. "No! Like I told you, I'm a dead man. Better for me to die facing one of Morgan's servants than to end up in his hands."
Before Palmer could argue any further, the door flew open, its lock and handle reduced to warm taffy. The pyrotic stepped into the room, sizzling in its own fat. Although it had the same boiled lobster complexion and dead white eyes as the elemental he'd confronted in San Francisco, Palmer doubted it was the same body. The one guarding Morgan's Pacific Heights residence would have been a puddle by now.
"So, the renfields sent you in their stead, eh?" Howell picked up a large, wickedly curved knife from the tray of instruments next to the dissecting table. "It'll do him no good! I'm not going back! You're going to have to kill me!"
The pyrotic did not seem to hear, much less understand. It moved closer, smoke issuing from its ears and nostrils like party streamers.
Palmer didn't waste any more words. If the scientist wanted to purge his sins in a one-sided battle with the pyrotic, that was his business. Palmer dove under the dissection table and peered down the trapdoor. All he could see was a rickety ladder disappearing into the darkness below. Hardly the stairway to heaven, but it would do.
"No! No, stay away from that, you idiot! It's not a television! I said no!" There was the sound of glass breaking and Howell screamed something unintelligible.
The changeling fetus lay on the floor, surrounded by shards of splintered glass. Its skin was the same bright, blistered pink of a boiled shrimp. The changeling emitted a plaintive mewling sound as it flopped helplessly about on the floorboards like a landed baby shark.
Palmer looked up in time to see Dr. Howell, shouting curses at the top of his voice, drive his blade into the pyrotic's stomach, slitting it from crotch to throat as easily as he would carve a holiday turkey. The pyrotic opened its mouth to scream, but all that came out was the hiss of live steam. Napalm spilled from the pyrotic's wound, splashing Howell.
The hapless scientist screeched as he was consumed by a column of flame - , trampling the dying changeling under his heels. Howell's screams grew as he waved his blazing arms over his head like a small boy beset by angry hornets.
A sinuous serpent-shape made of smoke and fire, like the bearded dragons wrapped about Chinatown's luck gate, uncoiled from the pyrotic's slit gullet, twining its way through the air in search of another host.
Palmer slammed the trapdoor shut behind him and quickly descended the ladder. Whatever dangers Ghost Trap might hold below, they were preferable to being turned into a human cherries jubilee.
Sonja calmly studied the chimera squatting atop her chest, with its poison -laden stinger and triple set of jaws. The chimera thrashed, roaring its confusion, as it began to sink into its erstwhile victim's chest. She got to her feet, the chimera's oversized scorpion's tail still whipping madly about in the middle of her stomach. Her eyelids fluttered as she was transfixed by a surge of intense pleasure.
Morgan's unmarked face began to drip pearls of blood as something that looked like an ape with long, spidery arms pulled itself free of his torso. The ape-thing had fungus-gray fur, compound eyes and a red, lampreylike maw. With a high-pitched squeal, the avatar launched itself at its master's foe, sinking a claw into her face.
The ape-thing emitted an ultrasonic shriek as first its wrist, then its elbow, was absorbed. The avatar jettisoned its right arm and leapt free, screeching like a bat. Clutching the stump of its right shoulder, the beast loped back to Morgan and cowered at his feet. Scowling, the vampire quickly gathered the avatar back into himself.
"You surprise me, changeling! I knew you were powerful, but I had not dreamed you possessed such will! It's been a long time since I've been challenged this way! It's almost enough to make me doubt my superiority. Almost. "
A tentacle burst from Morgan's chest, whipping about his head like a lariat. Two more emerged from his sides, quickly wrapping themselves around Sonja's waist, arms and legs. She hissed as the coils tightened, the hiss becoming a yowl as thousands of tiny needle-filled mouths began working at her dream-flesh.
And she was back in the physical world, curled into a fetal ball on the library floor. Or was she? She was still aware of herself, trapped in the Place Between Places, but at the same time she could feel the nap of the rug against her cheek. Morgan's shell squatted over her, hunched forward like a gargoyle perched on the cornice of a cathedral. His remaining eye was rolled so far back in his head it looked like a marble.
Damn it, don't just lay there snorting dust bunnies! Kill him! Kill him before he realizes he's only trapped part of us! The Other's voice sounded weaker, somehow.
Part of us? What did it mean?
Stop worrying about the duality of nature and stab the motherfucker!
Sonja's fingers were numb as she fumbled in her pockets for her switchblade. Where was it? Where?
Morgan tightened his grip on his enemy's imago, grinding the illusion of bone and flesh together to generate very real pain.
"Do you know what happens to a body once its imago is destroyed, little one? It's not unlike performing a lobotomy on one's soul."
The Other spat a streamer of blood into Morgan's face.
"Choke on it!"
Sonja spied the switchblade lying where she'd dropped it during her first seizure. Morgan's control over her body had lessened, but her arms still felt as if the marrow in her bones had been replaced with lead. She forced her right fist to unclench and slowly, painfully, inch its way toward the open switchblade.
Pain the color of an exploding sun filled the Other's eyes and ears. The more it struggled, the tighter the coils became, but the Other refused to lie still. It was not in its nature to surrender.
Morgan drew his appendages in, tilting his captive so that she dangled inches from his reconstituted face. In the real world, the jagged knife wound she had dealt him earlier would permanently render his smile into a joker's leer. But here, in the Place Between Places, such inconveniences could be ignored.
"You are beautiful and so sweetly lethal, my dear! It has been amusing, and I will bear a reminder of your murderous affliction for centuries to come. " He touched his cheek as if savoring a parting kiss. "I really must end our little affair... but not before you tell me where you've hidden the breeder's get. "
"Get bent."
It was no good. She couldn't uncramp her fingers enough to reach the blade. They were going to die. So close. She'd come so close.
Something the size of a man's hand separated itself from the shadows and scuttled toward the switchblade lying just outside of Sonja's reach. As it drew nearer, she realized it was a man's hand, albeit six fingered.
"That's funny, I don't remember you falling out of my pocket..." Sonja murmured.
The Hand of Glory nudged the switchblade with its fingers, pushing it in the direction of her own outstretched hand.
"Good girl, Lassie!"
"Tell me where the child is, changeling! Tell me!"
Blood oozed from the Other's nostrils, tear ducts, mouth and eardrums. The tentacles knotted themselves even tighter, grinding its internal organs into paste.
"I don't know." It wasn't exactly a lie.
"Come now, prodigal daughter! You can do better than that!"
"Why do you want the baby?"
"Because it is mine. It was my idea to create the thing - a man is entitled to the fruit of his endeavor. I intend to use the breeders' young to build a new society of living vampires."
The Other laughed, spraying Morgan's face with blood. "You stupid fuck! You don't even know what you created!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"The baby isn't a vampire, you dolt! It's a seraph!"
"You lie!"
The Other started laughing again, only harder. "You should have gotten a load of your face when I said that! What's the matter, dead boy? You soil your pants?"
"Shut up! Shut up, damn you! Stop laughing at me!"
"Make me!"
"Damn your eyes, Sonja Blue! I was willing to show you mercy, but now I won't be sated until you're flayed to the bone!
The Other's blood-smeared face split into a sharp white grin. "What makes you think I'm Sonja?"
Wretched Fly dashed into the library, wringing his hands in agitation. "Milord! Milord!"
Lord Morgan remained hunched, immobile and silent, over the rogue's body. Wretched Fly reached out and shook his master's shoulder. Morgan's right eye rolled back down, fixing Wretched Fly with a hard, angry stare.
"What is it? Can't you see I'm busy?"
"Milord, the pyrotic's disembodied! It's set the house afire!"
"What?!"
"It's spreading everywhere! The south wing's sixth and fifth floors have already collapsed! Milord, the sun's rising! We have to abandon the premises before the entire building goes up!"
"What about Howell?"
"I can only assume the doctor and the others are dead, milord. I can not find any trace of them on wide scan."
"Very well, go and prepare the Rolls. I'll be there momentarily, after I tend to my... daughter."
"Like hell you will, dead boy!" Sonja spat, thrusting her weapon's silver blade into Morgan's unprotected chest.
Morgan screamed like an old woman as he leapt to his feet, tearing at his expensive clothes. The edges of his wound were already turning black and withering away from contact with the silver. "Poison! Poison! You horrible, nasty creature!"
Morgan wept as he ripped the rotting tissue from his chest with his bare hands, desperately trying to keep the taint from spreading to the rest of his body.
"Unclean! Unclean!"
Sonja staggered to her feet, her muscles shrieking as circulation was restored. She made another swipe at Morgan, but the smoke filling the room blurred her aim. Wretched Fly grabbed his master and hurried him from the room.
Sonja tried to follow him, but her head was hurting real bad. She took a few steps and dropped to her knees, gagging on smoke. Morgan was escaping. She had to stop him. Kill him. Get it over with, once and for all. If she died under tons of flaming timber, what difference did it make? Who would be left to mourn - or even notice - her passing?
As her body was wracked by a coughing fit, it suddenly occurred to her how quiet it was inside her head. The Other's needling voice, her constant companion for nearly two decades, was strangely silent.
She moved cautiously, searching for signs of the Other as if probing a sore tooth with her tongue. Could it be that Morgan had somehow managed to kill it, while sparing her?
You're not rid of me, yet.
No, the Other was not dead. But it was hurt. It seemed weaker than it'd been in over a decade.
You owe me one.
She was back in the burning house, struggling to pull oxygen from the smoke-filled room. She glimpsed the Hand of Glory lying on its back, fingers curled in on themselves like the legs of a dead spider. The hand suddenly twitched and righted itself, scurrying across the antique Persian carpet and out the door into the hall.
Sonja dragged herself to her feet, coughing violently as she inhaled a lung full of dense white smoke. She staggered into the hallway, now almost obscured by billowing smoke. She could hear the roar of fire and the laughter of children.
The house shook as Ghost Trap's west wing collapsed into its cellar, knocking Sonja to the floor. She lay there, dazed, and wondered whether she was going to suffocate or burn to death first. The sound of laughing children grew louder.
A boy and girl, dressed in clothing fashionable before Mary Pickford was America's sweetheart, emerged from the swirling smoke. Sonja recognized the little girl as the ghost-child she'd met earlier. The children grabbed her hands and lifted her from the floor. Sonja decided she was too weak to fight them. Besides, they seemed to know where they were going.
The Seward children led her through smoke-obscured rooms into a dark passage. Sonja heard their long-dead, insectile voices buzzing in her ear but could not make out what they were saying. Soon they were back within the tortured architecture of Ghost Trap's outer house. As the Seward children continued to escort her, Sonja dimly realized her feet were no longer touching the floor.
Suddenly there was a desperate banshee wail, and their way was blocked by a hulking grotesque with two heads. The ghost-children deftly yanked their dazed charge out of the path of the large, blood-spattered ax the two-headed apparition swung in their direction. Sonja tried to break free of the dead children's grasp, but they refused to let go.
The gibbering, two-headed ax-murderer wrenched its weapon free from the splintered floorboards and prepared to lift it a second time. Then came the sound of a woman's laughter-light, merry, free-echoing through the empty rooms.
The creature paused to listen, its twisted, bat-snouted face grimacing.
Mrs. Seward's ghost materialized beside that of her killer. She suddenly grabbed her husband's head by its hair and began to pull. The ax-murderer squealed like a frightened piglet and flailed ineffectively at Mrs. Seward with its ax-hand. There was a muffled sucking sound, like someone pulling their foot free of thick mud, and the shoulders and torso of the late Creighton Seward emerged from the ax-murderer's leprous skin.
The ax-murderer shrieked even louder than before, its clawed feet drumming against the bare boards like those of a petulant child throwing a tantrum, but Mrs. Seward was not to be denied the reclamation of her husband. With a final, mighty tug, she freed Seward's naked body of its demonic twin. Robbed of its unwilling host, the parasitic demon collapsed like a gutted scarecrow, its corpus returning to formless ectoplasm.
The dead man shivered like a newborn foal and threw his arms around his murdered wife, his face pressed against her bosom. Sonja stared dully at the embracing couple, reunited for the first time since that horrible night in 1907, when Creighton Seward, in a moment of weakness, made an unwise bargain in a bid for artistic genius.
Mrs. Seward, her face no longer mutilated, leaned forward and brushed her translucent lips against Sonja's cheek.
Sonja found herself lifted into the air, hurtling through room after room as if shot from a cannon, the rumble of walls crashing and floors collapsing echoing in her ears. She saw the window a split second before she was catapulted through it into the tangled, thorny embrace of an overgrown rosebush.
Sonja dragged herself a few yards before collapsing. She dimly registered the sound of yet another of one of Ghost Trap's chimneys tumbling down in a thunderclap of bricks and mortar. She knew she was in extreme danger of the exterior wall collapsing on her, but somehow it didn't seem to matter.
Morgan had escaped. After all those years spent tracking him through the cities of the civilized world, she'd had him, felt his blood, felt his pain... only to have him escape. She'd been so close -
"Sonja! Thank God I found you!"
She squinted up at the figure kneeling over her. "Palmer?"
He looked like he'd been whacked with a golf club. His face was smeared with soot, he reeked of smoke, and he was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
"It ain't the Easter Bunny, baby!" He kissed her blood-smeared brow and helped her to her feet. After they were safely away from the house, they turned to watch its death throes. Ghost Trap glowed like the rising sun.
"Look," whispered Palmer, pointing at the smoke and sparks drifting heavenward.
Sonja watched as the pellucid outlines of the Seward family ascended the currents, accompanied by an equally pale and familiar figure with long, flowing hair and the shade of a moon-faced man in a flapping white coat, a deformed infant cradled in his arms. Within seconds of her sighting them, they were gone, lost among the smoke and soot and lightening sky.
"I'm not going to ask why you're not on a plane to the Yucatan. I'm glad you're here, Palmer." She leaned her forehead on his shoulder. "You up to driving? I've got the keys - "
"It doesn't matter, Sonja. The rental's buried under a couple tons of fireplace. It looks like we're going to have to hoof it into town and catch the bus into San Francisco."
She groaned and took his hand. "I guess we better start walkin', huh?"
As they made their way to the county road, Palmer heard the crunch of tires behind them. He turned in time to see a vintage Rolls with heavily tinted windows bearing down on them, an Asian man - his head swaddled in sooty bandages - behind the wheel. Without thinking, Palmer grabbed Sonja and dove into a nearby ditch. The Rolls rocketed by, spewing gravel in its wake.
Palmer and Sonja clambered back onto the shoulder and watched the limousine's taillights disappear in the early morning mist.
Morgan lay on the floor of the Rolls, wrapped in blankets and curled in a fetal position. His chest still burned, but he was certain he'd removed every trace of the silver-tainted tissue before the toxin had reached his central nervous system. His chest would heal. It might not even scar. The same could not be said of his face, however.
Morgan touched his left cheek and moaned. Wounds dealt by silver weapons never truly healed, and they always left ugly scars. But that was not the worst part. Broken bones would mend, damaged organs regenerate, and even severed limbs regrow, in time. But there would be no healing for the wounds she'd inflicted on his psyche, only a gradual spread of infection.
Lord Morgan, late of the Inquisition and the Gestapo, lay on the floor of his car and contemplated the dreadful sickness that humans called love.