chapter 15
The door leading to the basement was behind the bar. As she stood on the threshold, looking down into the gloom at the foot of the stairs, she spotted a pair of legs sticking out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, the booted feet tightly bound with a length of clothesline. The sight was enough for Sonja to push herself back into the driver's seat.
"Jack!" she shouted, trying to keep the panic from her voice.
There was a low, throaty moan, followed by the sound of an infant hungrily attacking a rubber nipple. The trussed legs jerked and trembled like those of a calf in a slaughterhouse. Sonja vaulted over the stair railing, sending the makeshift screen flying with a single kick.
Estes lay on his back, eyes rolled back in their sockets, helpless to defend himself against the hideous mockery battened onto his exposed throat. An umbilical cord trailed like a hank of slimy yarn from the vampire-child's beet colored body, connecting it to the prone figure of Lady Madonna, who lay with her legs spread wide, moaning in an obscene parody of orgasm.
As Sonja watched in horror, a clot of stolen blood slowly pulsed its way up the cord and disappeared between Lady Madonna's thighs.
Disturbed by the intrusion, the fetus raised its oversized head and hissed at Sonja like a feral kitten defending a saucer of milk. Its face was transparent and pink, like a mask made of pig's intestines engorged with blood. Nausea rose in Sonja's throat like floodwater.
Abomination! The Other's voice shrieked within Sonja's head, its revulsion and horror even greater than her own. Let me destroy it now! The Other's rage spread through Sonja like a high fever, licking the inside of her skull with tongues of fire. The hatred the approximation of a child triggered in the Other was as basic and instinctual to the enkidu as the fear of snakes is to humans. She could not have turned aside its murderous fury, even if she had wanted to; fighting the Other when it felt itself threatened was as futile as it was dangerous.
Lady Madonna struggled to sit up, groggy as a junkie on the nod. "What - what do you think you're doing - ?" she thickly slurred.
The Other brought a boot down on the narrow cord of tissue connecting Lady Madonna to her child- parasite. The fetus squealed angrily and flopped around like a gigged frog, impotently clawing the air as its attacker sliced its lifeline with the switchblade. A spurt of fresh blood - Estes' stolen life force - gushed forth from the severed umbilicus.
The screams from the fetus grew frantic as its skin dissolved into a red jelly and its eyes spurted from their sockets in soft, warm globs. Blinded, dripping melting flesh like wax from a candle, it crawled back to its mother-host, mewling like a lost kitten.
Lady Madonna, however, was no longer able to protect herself, much less her nightmare child. She writhed on the ground like a wounded snake as time, held so long at bay by her symbiotic relationship with her undead offspring, ravaged her body like a school of hungry piranha. Her breasts, swollen from decades of milk, withered into empty wineskins, while her belly deflated like a hot-air balloon.
"My baby!" Lady Madonna wailed, loose teeth falling from her aged gums. "You killed my baby!"
She lunged at the Other, her arthritic, liver-spotted hands hooked into impotent claws. The Other batted aside the crone with bemused contempt. "It was never a child. It was Abomination."
"He was the only thing I had! Now look at me!" She grabbed a snarled handful of gray hair, the heavily wrinkled, empty skin hanging from her upper arms in loose flaps. "You ruined everything, you god- damned oddling bitch!"
"There's nothing sadder than an orphaned renfield," the Other said, clucking its tongue. "You're better off joining your master." Placing one hand on Lady Madonna's shoulder, as if offering comfort, the Other drove the open switchblade through her withered breast.
Lady Madonna clutched at the Other's fist, trying to peel its fingers away from the knife hilt. The Other pulled the blade free and Lady Madonna dropped back onto the floor, as boneless as water.
"That's your second kill," Sonja whispered hoarsely as she reasserted her autonomy over their shared flesh. "Now go away."
You know as well as I do I can't go away. I can only go back, the Other said with a malicious sneer. You'll call on me again, of that I have no doubt. You need me, sister. You need me more than you ever will need anyone else. With that, the Other folded its malignancy about itself, like a bat wrapping itself in its wings, and dropped down the hole in the back of Sonja's brain.
The relief Sonja felt upon the Other's departure was short-lived. She knelt beside Estes. She had not allowed herself to really look at him until then, and she didn't like what she saw. His color was not good and he was far too still as she removed the ropes from his hands and feet. As Sonja pressed her fingers against the bruising around the tiny puncture wounds on his jugular, a clear, yellowish fluid, similar to snake venom, oozed forth.
She took one of his hands in her own, only to find it as limp as an empty glove. It was as if he had collapsed into himself, like a straw effigy left out in the rain. His skin, already pale, had become as translucent as opal, causing the veins of his face and hands to stand out like nests of snakes. A hard, cold lump filled the pit of her stomach, as if she had swallowed a lead sinker.
"Jack! Wake up!"
After a long moment his lids trembled and lifted, revealing eyes that shimmered like spectral lakes.
"Sonja..." His voice was vague and distant, as if dulled by morphine. He was greatly diminished, as if taken apart and then poorly reassembled. "It... it was so small... it fed... for hours...."
Sonja's lungs filled with a dread as thick and cold as mud, but she forced herself to smile. "I'm sorry it took so long to reach you. You're safe now. I killed it."
"My mother - ?"
"I took care of her."
"Thank... you." His eyes moved restlessly, like those of a caged monkey. "Noir? Is he - ?"
"He's dead," she replied, a little too quickly.
Estes frowned at her like a judge studying a suspicious witness. The shame crowding Sonja's throat became so great she had to look away.
"You're... lying."
She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. "He used his magic to escape. Took his damned ogre with him.
Fuckin' blood-wizard."
"It's not... your fault..." he rasped, his voice as fragile as a moth's wing. "I'm the one... who failed...."
"That's bullshit, Jack."
"I failed... my father... and myself.... Sonja... please... I need you... to do... one last thing...."
Sonja could see he was headed, and she didn't want to go there. "No. It's not going to come to that, Jack."
"You're... lying to me... again.... I can feel... my life running out... it's too late for me...."
"You're going to be okay."
"No... no, I'm not... you know what to do... don't let me... become one of them...."
Sonja looked into his eyes and felt death's presence nearby, invisible yet real, like the oxygen in the air between them.
"I think I love you, Jack." The words slipped out with surprising ease. Estes' lips twisted into something that was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like a grimace.
"I... think... I loved you, too...."
He gasped as if a large rock had been dropped on his chest, his back arching like Ulysses' bow. He clawed weakly at his throat, his eyes bulging from their sockets. Then, as quickly as it began, he dropped back into her arms, lifeless as an empty suit. His head lolled to one side as the spark in his eyes faded like the picture on an old television set.
Sonja gently rocked Estes' corpse back and forth, smoothing the hair from his pallid forehead. It was so much easier to be gentle with the dead than the living, and so unfair. She held him close until the last of his body heat was gone, leaving him as cold as clay in her arms. She didn't want to do what she knew had to be done, but she had no say in the matter. She had promised him he would not rise as one of the undead he had dedicated his life against. It would not be an easy task, or a pretty one.
She stretched his body out on the floor so that he was lying in repose; hands folded atop his chest, and placed the edge of the switchblade against his throat. She shook her head and folded the knife back into its ornate handle. It would be better if she used something more suited to the job.
As she reached inside the breast pocket of her leather jacket to retrieve Estes' Bowie knife, her fingers brushed against cool glass. She removed the mojo bottle and stared at the dancing light trapped within its blue heart. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't over yet.
Part Four
It's been a long long long time;
How could I ever have lost you
When I loved you?
Long Long Long,
- George Harrison