chapter 13
Estes regained consciousness wrapped in a plastic shroud. He coughed violently, struggling to suck clean air into his aching lungs, his skin covered by a clammy sheath of condensed breath. He found himself free of the fetid darkness, as he was dumped onto a bare concrete floor. The stacks of cardboard boxes and five-gallon plastic containers of peanuts and mini-pretzels lined against the wall told him he was in the basement of Dolly Dagger's. As he tried to get to his feet, a hand the size of a Virginia ham dropped onto the back of his neck.
"Ah. Estes the Younger. It has been some time since we last met." Although the Afro and turtleneck had been exchanged for fashionable dreadlocks and a Brooks Brothers suit, the vampire's face was unchanged since Estes had last seen him.
Estes tried to see if there were any other doors in or out of the room, but the ogre's fingers tightened on the back of his neck, causing him to grimace in pain.
"Do not try anything foolish, dear boy," Noir said, matter-of-factly. A palpable evil, like the stench of rotten garbage riding a hot, dry wind, radiated from his smile. "Ygon is more than willing - and able, I dare say - to tear your head from your shoulders."
"Blackheart!" Estes spat the word as if it had curdled in his mouth.
The vampire stepped forward, moving in a stately pantomime of normalcy. "Ah! That name brings back memories! However, I no longer go by that nom de guerre. You can call me by the name I took upon my resurrection..."
"Lord Noir," Estes said, finishing the sentence.
Noir paused for the slightest moment; eyebrow lifted, and then grinned like a beast born of distant, hungry jungles. "Did you find that bit of information on your own, or did your mistress tell you? I know you fancy yourself a vampire hunter, but it was your mistress who ferreted me out, isn't that right?"
"Sonja is not my - it's not like that between us."
"Oh? You are not her minion?"
"No! I'm - she's my friend."
Noir snorted in derision. "Call it what you wish, my boy! You are hers, of that I am certain. Although, I must say, you have handled yourself fairly well for a human. I saw much within you during our brief tete- ?-tete."
"Since you're being so talkative, would you mind telling me how long I was unconscious?"
"Less than an hour," Noir replied. "Nightfall will not be for some time. Not that sunlight could ever find its way down here."
"Why did you bring me here? Why not simply have your goons kill me at the hotel and get it over with?"
"You misunderstand, my boy," the vampire lord said with a deceptively easy smile. "Granted, I am willing to kill you, but only if you leave me no other choice. No, I brought you here so you could join me."
"What makes you think I would want to do that? You're the bastard who killed my father!"
"Au contraire, young Estes. Your father killed himself. Slit his throat from ear to ear."
"Only because you made him!"
Noir nodded his head, as if conceding a point. "It is true I danced the silly fool like the puppet he was. But your father's fate was sealed the moment he chose to steal from me. It's as simple as that. It is something of a habit of mine, destroying those who would betray me. I've gotten quite good at it, over the centuries.
"Still, I do not understand why you hate me so. Certainly your father's death was no great loss to you. The man was rarely home, and when he was there, did he really have time for you? Isn't hating me simply a safer means of channeling the anger you feel towards the one truly responsible for ruining your life?
Believe me, I know what it is like to want to kill your father. I even know what it is like to kill my father! It is not as horrible as others have made it out to be. But in our cause, your vendetta is so unnecessary. I am not the one who destroyed your family, dear boy - your father was."
"You sound just like Dr. Morrissey," Estes growled. "He kept insisting there weren't any monsters in the world, only guilt and shame."
"A wise man, indeed. You should have heeded his words, young Estes. Now that I think of it, you should be grateful for all I have done for you. If it were not for me, you'd be just another Southern California Gen-Xer with divorced parents, a problem with alcohol and an inability to maintain a committed relationship. You certainly would not have become the dedicated killing machine that you are now.
"A boy is shaped by his father far more than any other man in his life, and you must admit I have shaped your mind and manners beyond anything Franklin Estes ever could. You are as much my son as his - perhaps more so. When I look into your eyes, boy, I see loneliness without break or pause. You walk in darkness, you live in darkness; your bread is death and your wine the blood of enemies. In that you are as much my son as if you had sprung from my loins.
"You are an orphan, bereft of family and future. I, too, know what it is like to be cast adrift and denied your birthright; to be made an outsider against your will. I know what it is to walk apart from the common herd. By joining me, you will be part of a family knit far tighter than any born of man and woman. Once initiated into my brood, you will be accepted without qualm or hesitation. You will be brother and son to your mother, just as she will be sister and wife to you. You will be both son and grandchild to me, for I am the fountainhead from which all things flow."
Noir leaned forward, his placing his words chill upon Estes' cheek. "Besides, who do you think you are protecting? Humanity? If your kind can turn a blind eye to the pedophiles and serial killers amongst their number, how much easier is it for them to pretend more arcane predators don't exist? Man lives cheek-by- jowl with monsters, but pretends he does not see them, because it is easier that way. Better to be selectively blind than to see ugly truth - that is the human way.
"Humans are thankless, thoughtless beasts, more apt to turn on those who would save them than those who prey upon them. If you were to walk up to someone on the street and tell them that there are vampires loose in the world, would that person thank you for the warning? Of course not! He would call you insane and try to have you locked up some place where your words would not be heard or believed.
"If the police ever got their hands upon you, would they recognize your handiwork for what it is? More likely they would call you the monster and stick you in that rogue's gallery of mass murderers and serial killers your species is so adept at producing. They would look at your past and cluck their tongues about how yet another madman was set loose upon society. All your work, all your efforts to prove yourself, would be for nothing.
"However, I could use someone like you, Jack. To have a skilled vampire hunter in my service would give me an edge against my enemies within the Ruling Class. Renfields and ogres have their uses, but they are nothing com pared to a trained assassin. You can still kill vampires to your heart's content, but only the ones I tell you to. Come now, boy, what say you? Why waste your life and energy on defending a species content to march in lockstep to the slaughterhouse? Better to join my little family than to forever wander the world a pariah."
Estes turned his face to Noir. They were so close their noses touched. The vampire lord drew back, aware that he was being seen not as how he wished to be perceived, but for what he truly was: an inhuman thing.
"I don't know if you're right about mankind or not," Estes replied, his voice dripping with contempt. "But I will agree with you on one thing: you did shape my destiny. It was you who forged me into the instrument of your destruction."
All pretense of affability dropped from Noir's face, leaving it as rigid as a plank. "Tie him up. I have grown weary of talking to this fool," he said, with a terse, dismissive motion of his hand.
Ygon grunted and produced a length of clothesline from his coat pocket. Estes gritted his teeth as the ogre trussed him up like a Christmas turkey. Once he was finished, all he could do was lie on his side on the cold, hard floor of the basement.
Noir squatted beside Estes, studying his captive's face with the dispassion of an entomologist watching a mildly interesting species of beetle meet its end in a killing jar. Now that he was no longer pretending to care, Noir's otherness was as blatant as exposed genitalia.
"You love your truth so much?" the vampire lord hissed. "Then you shall have it. I have no real interest in acquiring you for my brood. You are nothing more than bait. It is your `friend' I want, the one they call the Blue Woman. She will come for you."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know vampires, my dear boy. And a vampire always comes to claim those humans who belong to it."
Noir stood up, dusted off his knees with a brisk clap of his hands, and headed back up the stairs, leaving Estes alone in the cellar with only the ogre for company. Ygon shifted his weight from one foot to the other, absently cracking his enormous knuckles, and then dropped down onto his haunches, his arms dangling between his knees like those of an ape.
Estes had not felt so helpless since his resistance to Dr. Morrissey's version of reality had landed him in the Box. At least the Box had padded floors. After a couple of hours of discomfort, Estes lost consciousness, only to awake with a start. As he tried to reorient himself to his surroundings, he heard the telltale click of high heels on the concrete floor. He tried to look around, but it was impossible to see who was there. A familiar female voice spoke up. "His lordship needs you upstairs."
Ygon stood up and rolled his shoulders. "As he wills, milady." He nodded to where Estes lay on the floor.
"What of this one?"
A pair of women's feet shod in black patent leather entered Estes' limited field of vision. "I am to watch him."
As Ygon clomped up the stairs, the woman rolled Estes onto his back with a kick of her pumps. It was the pregnant maid from the hotel, except now she was dressed in a bright red skintight knit mini-dress that made her look like a candy apple on a stick.
"Who are you?" He whispered hoarsely.
"They call me Madonna. Lady Madonna," she replied, sneering.
"You're human, aren't you? How could you do this?" he asked, appalled. "How can you ally yourself with monsters? What about your child? What do you think these creatures will do to it once it's born?"
Lady Madonna tossed back her head and laughed, sounding more hyena than human.
"What do I think will become of my child? There's not a moment goes by when I don't think of him - or he of me!" She dropped to her knees beside Estes, staring intently into his face. "How pregnant am I?"
"What - ?"
"How many months along do you think I am, you ninny!" she snapped.
Estes frowned, uncertain of where this line of questioning was going. "I... I don't know-seven months, eight?"
"Try three-hundred and sixty." The look of shock that crossed his face triggered another burst of humorless laughter from her. "I've been like this since 1971! I started out as a dancer, like the girls upstairs; except back then it was just topless, none of this bottomless stuff. Then the guy who owned the club where I was dancing knocked me up. Suddenly I was out on the streets with no way to make a living and too far gone to get a legit doctor to take care of things. I ended up going to this back-alley quack.
When I met him, I could tell he was weird, but beggars can't be choosers, right? When I came to, the weirdo was gone, my neck was torn up, and I was still pregnant.
"At first I thought I got burned by some psycho pervert, but it didn't take long for me to figure out that something was different. The baby didn't move around like he used to. During the day he just lay there in my belly, motionless, but the moment the sun went down, he began kicking like crazy. Hell, I couldn't sleep at night anymore he was so active! I also started to get cravings. Not for pickles and ice cream and shit like that. I wanted raw liver and fresh ox blood. I wasn't sure what was happening to me, at first, but I had a pretty good idea it had something to do with the quack biting me.
"I tried to find others like me, you know, thinking I could fit in with them. I didn't know how much vampires loathe pregnant women, though. That was bad enough, but when they realized I was a living human woman with an undead child in my belly, they went ape-shit! If it hadn't been for Lord Noir, we would never have made it to sun-up.
"Lord Noir didn't want to destroy me. He said we weren't an Abomination, but an oddling - just like him.
He said oddlings were unique, each special in its own way. That's why the regular vampires hated us so - because we weren't exactly like them. Lord Noir took us in and made us part of his operation. For the first time we didn't have to worry about being found out by humans or hunted down by rival broods. Lord Noir protected and sheltered us as if we were his own. He is our liege and lord; his will is ours. And Lord Noir has willed that you join us." She shook her head in disdain as Estes struggled in against his bonds. "That will do you no good. Even if you somehow managed to free yourself, there is no escaping his will."
Lady Madonna stood up and took a few steps away from where Estes lay, then squatted and leaned back, planting her elbows against the floor, spreading open her legs so that he was able to see her naked sex.
Estes' cheeks colored and he averted his eyes as best he could, but was helpless to look away.
Lady Madonna began to pant loudly, her breath coming in short, precise gasps, punctuated by grunts of pain, as she labored to expel the thing inside her. Instead of the hours it would normally take, the top of the baby's head crowned between her legs within a matter of minutes. As he watched, Estes realized the reason the delivery was so rapid was because the infant was actively participating in its own birth.
With a sudden burst of frenzied wriggling, its head and shoulders popped free of the birth canal, its tiny, ferret-like nails scraping against the floor. The scrawny creature that emerged, red and slick, from Lady Madonna's womb more closely resembled a skinned rabbit than a human child. It lay motionless for a long moment, then raised its oversized head and opened its mouth, giving voice to a weird, thin cry, like that of a kitten, exposing a pair of tiny fangs in otherwise naked gums.
It wasn't a baby so much as it was a fetus: an unfinished thing, with spongy, pinkish tissue in place of skin and dark-adapted eyes. It flopped about like a landed fish for a few moments, squirming on its back, the garnet-colored eyes open and closing like those of a baby owl in the unaccustomed light. After a few seconds it seemed to orient itself and flipped onto its belly, lifting its upper torso off the ground with its surprisingly well-developed forearms, like an iguana sunning itself on a rock. The fetus's hairless head was unnaturally large in comparison to its stick-like legs and starved-dog ribcage, causing it to wobble and bob like a balloon on a stick. It sniffed the air with a stunted, upturned nose, hissing like a basket of snakes.
"Dear God," Estes whispered in open horror.
The fetus snapped its head in the direction of his voice and made an eager gurgling cooing sound, like a baby who has spotted its favorite toy. Pulling itself along with its clawed hands, it crawled forward, an obscene mechanical doll dragging the umbilical cord behind it like a lap of gut.
"What's the matter, Jack?" Lady Madonna said with a laugh. "Don't you like children?"