chapter 17
V?V? looked up from the pot of gumbo simmering on the kitchen stove as the headlights cut across the kitchen window. Sighing, she turned off the gas ring and dried her hands on the apron cinched about her waist. She could tell by the slam of the car door that whatever happened in New Orleans had not been good.
"They would not help," V?V? said simply, as Sonja entered the room. Sonja nodded sharply but said nothing. V?V? moved forward and took her friend's hands in her own. "Honey, you got to recognize that there are times when things are beyond your ability to set right. This is one of 'em. You have to let go, otherwise you're just tormenting yourself for no earthly use."
Sonja took a deep breath, steadying herself as best she could, then blew it back out. "You're right. I can't put it off any more. Where is he?"
"Still in the basement. I got Levon keepin' flies off him."
"Let's get it over with, then."
As V?V? opened the cellar door, a damp, earthy smell, like that of a cave, rose to greet them. She turned an old-fashioned twist-switch just inside the door and a solitary light bulb flared into life at the foot of the stairs, illuminating the dirt floor and brick walls pock-marked by lichen and mold.
"Hope you don't mind me turnin' on the light," V?V? said as they descended the steep wooden stairs. "I realize you can see perfectly well in the dark, and Levon...well, it's been a long time since day or night mattered to him at all. But I'm afraid my eyesight's nowhere near as sharp."
Estes' body, still wrapped in the velvet stage curtain from the strip club, lay atop an old picnic table in the coolest part of the cellar. Levon stood over the corpse like a bizarre scarecrow, staring into nowhere, a flyswatter clutched in one hand.
"That's enough for now, Levon," V?V? said, waving the zombie aside. The flyswatter dropped from Levon's dead fingers as he stepped back to await his next command.
Sonja gazed down at Estes' face for a long moment before peeling back the makeshift shroud. Once the body was completely exposed, she glanced at V?V? and nodded. The voodoo priestess took a white kerchief from her apron pocket and tied it about her head, chanting a prayer for the dead under her breath.
Sonja reached inside her jacket and withdrew Estes' silver Bowie knife. Normally it would take a hacksaw to sever a human head, but given her preternatural strength and the sharpness of the blade, it would only take two, maybe three cuts to do the job.
Jack Estes was gone. All he was and ever could be fled with his final breath. The thing stretched out on the table before her was a husk; nothing more than dead, senseless meat defiled by the taint of the enkidu.
By destroying this corrupted vessel, she would prevent yet another member of the undead from walking the earth and save the lives of countless others. So why were her hands trembling? Why did her heart ache as if it was being squeezed in a tourniquet? She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip until something like blood came to her mouth.
She placed the Bowie knife against Estes' exposed throat. She had performed this act a thousand times before, without hesitation. Estes would feel nothing; indeed, he was already far removed from any pain and sorrow. She leaned forward and pressed her lips against Estes' pallid brow in a final kiss farewell. His flesh was as cold as something dredged from a pond.
As she pressed the blade against the bloodless skin, the back of her scalp began to rise, as if a frigid wind had blown across her spine. The light bulb hanging overhead brightened from sixty to one hundred watts before bursting with a sudden pop, plunging the cellar into darkness deeper than a bad dream. V?V?
gasped in alarm, her prayer forgotten.
There was a crystalline chiming sound, as if all the bottles on the mojo tree were being rattled in unison, and a pale, coruscating light, like that reflected off a pool of water, crawled its way across the cellar walls, stopping at the foot of Estes' makeshift bier.
"Sonja, what's goin' on?" V?V? whispered fearfully.
"I'm not sure... but maybe my trip to the city wasn't a waste of time, after all."
A man with long tangles of greasy hair and sunken cheeks, dressed in a baggy gray raincoat and mismatched high-top tennis shoes, a filthy wool watch cap pulled down about his ears, materialized before them. He shuffled nervously, moving from one foot to the other, and swung his head from side to side with the rhythmic constancy of the autistic. Although the features were radically altered, there was something about how the seraph held himself that reminded Sonja of someone she used to know.
Levon lurched forward, placing himself between his mistress and the mysterious intruder, causing lights to fly from the seraph's eyes like sparks from a blacksmith's forge.
"It's okay, V?V?," Sonja said, holding up a hand to stay the zombie's attack. "This creature is known to me."
V?V? took in the seraph's unkempt appearance, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "Is this the one you told me about? The one y'all called `Fido'?"
Sonja shook her head. "No. It is another. Once, not so long ago, this was the Noble who sired the vampire who created me."
V?V? frowned. "What exactly does that mean?"
Sonja turned and favored her friend with a twisted smile. "This is my grandfather."
The seraph's rocking to-and-fro became more pronounced, his head turned so that it looked at Sonja from the corners of its eyes, as if frightened of making full contact.
"Pangloss." Sonja whispered the name, but the seraph flinched as if she had shouted it at the top of her lungs.
She received a mental image of herself, a blazing halo the color of blood crowning her head, carrying a frail old man through dark and winding catacombs deep below the streets of New York City.
"Yes," she replied gently. "I remember. I helped you reach the necropolis. I was with you when you died."
The seraph shook his head so violently it looked like it was in danger of flying off his shoulders. Sonja's mind filled with a jumble of images, most of them too painful to recall.
"You're right," she replied quickly. "You did not die. You transmuted." Sonja saw a vast sea of faces, some human, some not. Some of the faces shone like lanterns, while others were cast in shadows as black as oil. The majority of the faces were neither alight nor in eclipse, but somewhere in between. One of these faces, she realized with a start, was her own.
"I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I don't understand what you're trying to show me. Did you come here to help me?"
Pangloss's head halted its extreme side-to-side movement. The seraph stepped forward, peering intently at Estes' body, his nostrils flaring like those of a hound as he sniffed the moldy air. The seraph's eyes shone like jars of honey held before a fire. A pale and diffuse light surrounded Pangloss's right hand like a halo around the moon. Sonja stepped back, motioning for V?V? to do the same.
The seraph's fingers pushed against Estes' brow, passing through skin, muscle and bone without the aid of a scalpel or the shedding of a single drop of blood. As she watched his hand disappear into the dead man's cranium, Sonja was reminded of an old shaman she once knew who would stand motionless in a mountain creek, patiently waiting for a fish to swim by so he could snatch it from the water.
The thing Pangloss pulled from Estes' skull, however, looked like no fish spawned of any ocean known to man. Its skin was black and shiny as wet latex, and it had a large, wedge-shaped head, like that of a pit viper. It opened a sucker-like mouth, exposing concentric rings of sharp fangs, and gave voice to an ultrasonic shriek, like that of a bat. Its tiny red eyes gleamed with malevolent intelligence as it lashed its long, whip-like body in a desperate attempt to escape. It lacked legs and arms, but possessed what looked like vestigial wings jutting from what might have been stunted shoulder blades. The seraph held the thing at arm's length, gripping it tightly behind the hinge of its jaws, as it hissed like an angry bushmaster.
Sonja stared in sick fascination at the thing. So this was what vampires really looked like, once stripped of their human hosts. No wonder they were obsessed with personal appearance and worked so hard to surround themselves with beautiful people and nice things. The realization that such a creature was burrowed deep inside her own psyche made her stomach tighten.
Pangloss studied the enkidu for a long moment, a look of visible disgust on his face. Then the seraph opened his mouth, displaying teeth as strong and white as a tiger's, and without a moment's hesitation, bit the struggling vampire's head off and spat it onto the floor. Its body jerked in his hand like a garden hose, squirting foul-smelling black goo like rancid jism.
Sonja grimaced like an African mask and looked away, disgusted by the display. Although she had no idea how seraphim disposed of enkidu and other possessing demons, she certainly hadn't expected a geek act. But now it was very clear to her why the Other was always nervous in the presence of seraphim.
Pangloss tossed aside the rapidly decomposing carcass of the enkidu and turned to face Sonja. The Other was scrambling around inside her skull, frantic as a trapped mouse, but she was helpless to flee, even if she had wanted to. The seraph's golden gaze nailed her to the spot as surely as a fakir's flute holds a cobra in its sway.
Pangloss lifted his crooked, befouled fingers and tapped his chest, then pointed to her own heart, a quizzical look on his seamed face. Sonja received a vision of herself glowing like a Japanese lantern.
"No, grandfather," she said, shaking her head. "I've existed this way far too long to go back now. Chances are I could not stay human, no matter how hard I tried. I know too much about the Real World. While I cannot return to what I once was, neither am I ready to go forward. Not yet, anyway. I thank you for the offer, though."
Pangloss regarded her for a long moment, as if deciding whether to accept her words, then nodded his shaggy head. The glow behind his smoked-honey eyes grew as strong as headlights, becoming brilliant enough that Sonja had to avert her gaze. Then the light was gone, and with it Pangloss, plunging the cellar back into crypt-like darkness.
V?V? reached into her apron pocket and produced a book of paper matches and a small white votive candle. The light from the candle cast distorted shadows that flickered across the faces of the vampire standing to the left of her, the zombie standing to her right, and the corpse on the table before her.
"That's some family you got there, girl," the voodoo priestess said, shaking her head.
Sonja stared down at the tiny blue bottle glowing in her fist. "Yeah," she said, her voice tight with unshed tears. "I know."