"What? Are you going to
kill
me?"
Sonja crawled back to her place in the corner. The effort started her coughing again, bringing up black, clotted blood. She wiped at her mouth with the sleeve of her jacket, nearly dislocating her jaw in the process.
You're falling apart. You're too weak to regenerate properly...
"If you hadn't pounded your head against the fuckin' wall trying to get out in the
first
place—"
You're the one that got us locked up in here! Don't blame me!
"I
am
blaming you. But not for that."
It's that fucking stupid human again! You think you can punish me for that? I didn't do
anything that you hadn't already fantasized about!
"You
raped him,
damn you! You almost killed him!"
I didn't, though. I could have. But I didn't.
I
loved
him!" Sonja's voice cracked and became a sob.
You didn't love him. You loved being mistaken for human. That's what you're mad about;
not that I molested your precious lover boy, but that I ruined your little game of Let's
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)
Pretend!
"Shut up."
Make me.
Judd checked the street number of the warehouse against the address that Mai had given him. This was the place. It was one of the few remaining warehouses in the district that had not been turned into trendy yuppie condo-apartments. There was a small sign posted on the front door that read Indigo Imports, but nothing else. A heavy chain and double padlock secured the entrance and all the ground floor windows had burglar bars. There had to be
some
way of getting in and out.
He rounded the side of the building and spotted the loading dock. After a few minutes of determined tugging, he succeeded in wrenching one of the sliding metal doors open wide enough for him to slip through.
The inside of the warehouse was lit only by the mid-afternoon sunlight slanting through the barred windows and the place smelled of dust and rat piss.
The meat locker was on the ground floor, just where Mai said it would be. Its metal walls and door were covered in sworls of spray painted graphitti. What looked like a huge line of coke marked the locker's threshold. Judd grabbed the door's handle and yanked it open.
There was a faint crackling sound and a rush of cold, foul air. He squinted into the darkness, covering his nose and breathing through his mouth to mask the stench.
"Sonja?"
Something moved in the deepest shadows of the freezer. "J-Judd? Is that you?"
"It's me, baby. I've come to get you out of here." "Go away, Judd. You don't know what you're doing."
Judd stepped into the locker, his eyes adjusting to the gloom. He could see her now, crouching in the far corner with her knees drawn up against her chest, her face turned to the wall.
"No, you're wrong, Sonja. I know
exactly
what I'm doing."
"I let her hurt you, Judd. I could have stopped her, but I didn't. I let her—let her—" Her voice grew tight and her shoulders began to shake. "Go away, Judd. Go away before I hurt you again."
Judd kneeled beside her. She smelled like a side of beef gone bad. Her hands were covered with blisters and oozing sores. Some of the fingers jutted at odd angles, as if she'd broken them and they had healed without being properly set. She pulled away at his touch, pressing herself against the wall as if she could somehow squeeze between the cracks.
"Don't look at me."
"Sonja, you don't understand. I
love
you. I know what you are, what you're capable of—and I love you
anyway.'"
"Even if I hurt you?"
"Especially
when you hurt me."
Sonja turned her head in his direction. Her face looked like it had been smashed then
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) reassembled by a well-meaning, but inept, plastic surgeon who only had a blurry photograph to go by. Her eyes glowed like those of an animal pinned in the headlights of an on-coming car.
"What?"
Judd leaned closer, his eyes reflecting a hunger she knew all too well. "At first I was scared. Then, after awhile, I realized I wasn't frightened anymore. I was actually getting into it. It was like the barriers between pain and pleasure, animal and human, ecstasy and horror, had been removed! I've never known anything like it before! It was
incredible!
I love you, Sonja!
All
of you!"
She reached out and caressed his face with one of her charred hands. She had turned him into a renfield. In just a few hours the Other had transformed him into a junkie, and now she was his fix.
"I love you too, Judd. Kiss me."
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) She sat behind the wheel of the car for a long time, staring out into the dark on the other side of the windshield. Nothing had changed since the last time she'd been out here, disposing of Kitty.
She pressed her fingertips against her right cheek, and this time it held. Her fingers were healed and straight again as well. She readjusted her shades and opened the car door and slid out from behind the wheel of the Caddy she'd bought off the lot, cash-in-hand.
Judd was in the trunk, divvied up into six garbage bags, just like Kitty. At least it'd been fast. Her hunger was so intense she drained him within seconds. He hadn't tried to fight when she buried her fangs in his throat, even though she hadn't the strength to trance him.
Maybe part of him knew she was doing him a favor.
She dragged the bags out of the trunk and headed in the direction of the alligator calls.
She'd have to leave New Orleans, maybe for good this time. Kitty might not have been missed, but Judd was another story. Arlo was sure to mention the missing Judd's weirdo new girlfriend to the authorities.
It was time to blow town and head for Merida. Time to go pay Palmer a visit and check on how he and the baby were making out.
Palmer.
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) Funny how she'd forgotten about him. Of all her human companions, he was the only one she'd come closest to loving. Before Judd.
She hurled the sacks containing Judd's remains into the water and returned to the car. She tried not to hear the noise the gators made as they fought amongst themselves.
She climbed back into the car and slammed a cassette into the Caddy's tapedeck. Lard's
The Last Temptation of Reid
thundered through the speakers, causing the steering wheel to vibrate under her hands. She wondered when the emptiness would go away. Or at least be replaced by pain. Anything would be preferable to the nothing inside her.
I
don't see why you had to go and kill him like that. We could have used a renfield. They
do come in handy, now and then. Besides, he was kind of cute...
"Shut up and drive."
Tender Tigers
You don't hear much about ogres nowadays. There are tons of books and movies and other media tie-ins about fairies out there. Same with elves. That's because they're supposed to be cutesy-poo make-believe shit, even though
I
know better.
The same goes for the proliferation of vampires in pop culture, except in that case they've been reinvented as the ultimate misunderstood bad boy. It's hard to believe that humans can take reanimated corpses who feed on the blood of the living and turn them into romantic icons, but there you go.
It doesn't work for ogres, though. They're too scary for the modern nursery, and they certainly don't cut it as sex symbols. Not unless your idea of a romantic evening is a close cuddle on the couch with Leatherface.
In a world that can produce the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer and the Trenchcoat Mafia, stories of cannibal monsters who look enough like humans that they can marry into normal families without anyone noticing cuts too close to the bone. So ogres have been downgraded from superstition to folklore, along with all the other long-legged beasties and things that used to go bump in the night. Which suits them just fine. It is much easier to go about your work when nobody believes you exist.
As Pretenders go, ogres are something of an embarrassment. They lack the vampires'
mesmeric powers and the were-races' ability to shift. Nor do they possess the
Strega
and
sidhe's
inborn talent for sorcery. What they
do
have in their favor is that they are very, very strong and the females of the species are, for the most part, indistinguishable from humans. The males can pass as well, at least while young. But once they start developing bull ogre attributes, there's no being mistaken for "normal" in human society—not without considerable camouflage.
If the stories about them are true, the ogres once battled and preyed upon the Neanderthals, over whom they had a significant advantage in the survival of the fittest department. In their way, they were kings of shit mountain back then.
Then Homo Sapiens made the scene.
Although they might have been considerably smaller and physically weaker than the ogres, they had a nasty habit of using tools. Especially sharp ones that could be used from a distance. Things began to get out of hand very fast.
With their immense strength, hardy physique, and smallish brains, ogres have managed to find a place for themselves in Pretender society by providing muscle to those who require
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) it. They make loyal servants and tireless watchdogs. And, in their own odd way, they are dedicated parents. As commendable as that might sound, you have to bear in mind that they raise their young by stalking human families, hollowing them out, and living inside them. Not literally, mind you. But close enough.
I've had more than a few run-ins with ogres over the years, but mostly because they were in the service of a vampire noble or doing work for human crime bosses and foreign military regimes. But every now and again I run across the odd free-range ogre.
Its not that unusual to see unsupervised youngsters on the city street going to and from the laundromat with bundles of clothes. What caught my eye was how young this particular child was—she couldn't have been any older than seven or eight. She was far too small to be manhandling the wire shopping cart full of clothes and laundry supplies along a city street so late at night. She could barely see over the top of the cart, which she pushed with both hands.
As she doggedly maneuvered the overloaded cart up the street, I scanned a half-block in front of and behind her, trying to spot any sign of an adult who might be accompanying her. There was none to be found. This made my antennae go up.
Unattended children are the favorite prey of virtually every breed of Pretender...not to mention run-of-the-mill human monsters as well. As a precaution, I opened my sight even farther, scanning the pedestrians and other passers-by in the area. While there were plenty of seedy types loitering on the surrounding doorsteps and street corners, none of them were werewolves or vampires.
As the child rounded the corner and headed up a side street, I decided to follow her. I kept to the shadows, trailing a safe distance behind.. .not so near that I would be noticed, but close enough should a smiling stranger emerge from a doorway or lean out of a passing car.
Without any warning, one of the wheels on the overloaded laundry cart gave way, jack-knifing its contents onto the pavement. The girl gave a horrified gasp and clapped her hands to her mouth, a look of fear on her face more in keeping with someone who has foreseen their imminent death, rather than that of a child who has had a small accident.
That's when I decided to surrender the shadows in favor of stepping forward.
"Hey, kid—do you need some help?"
She spun to face me, utter panic in her bright blue eyes. Upon seeing I was a stranger the fear was gone, replaced by relief.
"Fiona's gonna be mad," she said simply, then stooped to gather up the dropped clothes.
"Is that so?" I replied as I righted the cart. "Is Fiona your mom?"
"No," she said, with an emphatic shake of her head. "My mommy's dead."
"Then who is Fiona?" I asked, taking an armload of laundry, still warm from the dryer, and dropping it back into the cart. "Your big sister?"
"She's my daddy's wife."
I lifted an eyebrow and tried to smile as openly as I could without showing my teeth. "My
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) name's Sonja. What's yours?"
"Tiffany."
"That's a pretty name."
Tiffany shrugged shoulders as fragile as those of a baby bird. "My daddy says I'm named after a lamp."
"They're very beautiful lamps."
A look of curiosity crossed her pale features, transforming her weary expression into that of a child again. "Really? Have you seen one?"
I found her excitement contagious, and I couldn't keep myself from chuckling. "Not only have I seen one, I actually
own
one."
"Wow! Could I see it sometime?" Tiffany asked, her eyes sparkling like her namesake's.
"Nothing's impossible."
"Tiffany!"
The voice was as shrill as a dentist's drill, and just as pleasant to experience. I looked up from where Tiffany stood and saw a woman with a towering bouffant, heavy thighs, and ample bosom, dressed in skin-tight zebra-print leggings and an appliquéd kitty-cat sweatshirt rapidly bearing down on us. Tiffany's face drained of all color and animation, returning to its previous gray slackness.
"Fiona," she said dully, in way of explanation.
As Tiffany's stepmother drew closer, I caught a scent not unlike that of the lion house at the zoo. It was clear that my presence had not gone unnoticed as well. The ogress froze in her tracks, her piggish eyes narrowing at the sight of me. She tossed her head and made a snorting noise, like a wild boar that's caught wind of a mountain lion.