Paint It Black (11 page)

'It's okay, Fido. The Other's asleep, too.'

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) Lethe gently brushed aside a lock of dark hair from her stepmother's forehead and kissed her brow. Sonja's skin was cool and dry under her lips.

'Bye, Auntie Blue,' she whispered. Thanks for helping me get born.'

Palmer decided to fix Lethe's favorite meal as a peace offering and went to her room to tell her to wash up, assuming she was either playing with her dolls or reading books to Fido.

'Lethe? Time for dinner! I made pigs-in-a-blanket - how does that sound? Lethe?'

Fido looked up from his guard post at the foot of Lethe's bed, his eyes unreadable as ever. Palmer's eyes went automatically to the bed, but there was no sign of Lethe amongst the jumble of dolls and stuffed animals. In the space where she normally slept was what looked like a sleeping bag made of semi-opaque yellow plastic.

'What the--?' Palmer stepped forward, frowning. Maybe it was something Sonja had brought back for Lethe from New Orleans...

As he got closer, he could tell that whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't a sleeping bag. Almost four feet long and two feet around, the thing seemed to pulse and glow from within.

And even though he could not see enough of her to make a positive identification, he knew whose small, slender body it was hanging suspended at its amber core.

'Lethe!'

Palmer lunged at the cocoon to tear it open with his bare hands and yank his daughter free, but the moment his fingers brushed the outer casing a surge of psychic energy, as painful as it was powerful, shot up his arms and into his brain, hurling him backward as if he'd tried to scale an electric fence.

As he shook his head to clear it, Fido moved to stand between him and the bed. The seraphim's arms were outspread, his chin lowered in what Palmer recognized as a protective stance.

Palmer's legs were wobblier than a newborn colt's and his nose was dripping blood, but he was unharmed. 'Damn you!

Stand aside!' he snapped as he got to his feet.

Fido did not offer to move.

'She's hurt! I've got to help her!'

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) Fido's arms wavered for a second, then lowered.

Palmer stepped forward.

The second blast kicked him into the hall. His goatee and hair were singed. Without using his hands, Fido closed the door to Lethe's bedroom.

It took Palmer a few seconds, but he somehow managed to get to his feet. His nose was still bleeding and his ears rang as if he'd been sitting on top of an air-raid siren. He staggered down the hall, propping his shoulder against the wall to keep from falling.

Sonja was still asleep. Her skin felt strangely dry and cool under his hands, like that of a reptile.

'Sonja!'

She moved sluggishly, brushing at him with her left hand as if he was a bothersome insect intruding on her sleep. She mumbled something under her breath, then rolled over, pulling the sheet over her head. Trying not to let the panic overwhelm him, Palmer took a deep breath and stepped back from the bed, focusing himself long enough to fashion a heavy-wattage thought bolt. Then he threw it at her head.

Sonja!

The thought bolt bowed Sonja's body upward as if she'd been juiced with a car battery. Her eyes flew open and she sat up like a knife blade. The hair on her head stood on end and crackled like static on a radio. When he reached out to grab her naked shoulder she drew back and hissed at him.

'Sonja! Sonja - it's me! Something's happened!'

Sonja blinked and lifted a hand to her brow. 'Something's happened to Lethe?'

'How'd you know that?'

Sonja slid out of the bed and began pulling on her clothes.

'I had a dream she told me goodbye.'

She followed Palmer back up the hall, listening to him recount what had happened earlier. The door to Lethe's room was still closed. She tried the door; it wasn't locked.

'It's probably safe to go in. Fido would never let anything hurt Lethe, so whatever you were planning to do was probably interpreted as dangerous to her.'

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'I was going to get her out of that... that thing?

Sonja gave Palmer a hard look. 'Bill, just shut up and let me handle this, okay?'

The door opened effortlessly. Sonja stepped inside, Palmer following her. Fido still stood on guard, shuffling from one foot to the other, watching them intently with his golden eyes. Sonja held up her hands, palms outward, smiling nervously.

Being in such close proximity to the seraphim was actively unpleasant - it felt as if she'd been dipped in honey and placed on top of an anthill.

'We don't want to hurt Lethe, Fido. We know you won't allow that. We're not going to touch her, Fido--'

'Like hell we aren't!'

'Shut up, Palmer! Don't mind him, Fido. He's just scared. 'He thinks something bad has happened, and he just wants to

help Lethe.'

The seraphim continued rocking back and forth, its head wavering like that of someone suffering from Parkinson's disease.

Sonja turned back to Palmer and grabbed his arm above the elbow, squeezing it until he grimaced. "Bill, I want you to promise me that you won't do anything stupid, like try and touch Lethe. You got off lucky the first two times, but if you try it again Fido will burn your brain like bacon in the pan, do you understand me?'

'Yeah. I don't like it, but I understand.'

Sonja turned back to Fido. 'We just want to look at her, That's all.'

Slowly, the seraphim moved aside, allowing them an unimpeded view of what lay on Lethe's bed. Sonja could see why Palmer had first mistaken it for a sleeping bag, since it resembled one of the mummy-case models. It was close to five feet long and three feet around, and seemed to be made from amber. It was translucent in spots and filled with a thick fluid that gave off a diffuse light, like that of a glowworm. Deep within the fluid she glimpsed what looked to be the outline of a child.

'It's grown,' Palmer muttered. 'It wasn't this big when I first found it... Whatever it is.'

'By the looks of it, I'd say it's a cocoon.'

'What the hell is she doing in a fuckin' cocoon?

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'Undergoing some sort of metamorphosis - that's what cocoons are for.'

'For the love of God, Sonja, aren't you going to do something?

That's our little girl in there!' Palmer shouted, lunging for the bed.

Fido moved to block his path and the sound of dynamos gearing up filled the room, the vibrations causing Sonja's fangs to ache. Swearing under her breath, she grabbed Palmer and tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry, slamming the door shut behind her.

She stomped into the kitchen and dropped him, unceremoniously, into one of the chairs. Palmer was livid, his anger so fierce he was choking on his words, It didn't matter - she could hear what he was thinking.

'You can think I'm a cold-blooded bitch all you want, William Palmer,' Sonja snapped. 'But I just saved you from having your brains scrambled in your skull! If Fido had let you have it, you'd be shitting in diapers and eating through tubes for the rest of your natural days!'

Palmer's face lost some of its blood. 'I ... I realize that, Sonja. I'm sorry I thought those things about you, but surely you can't expect me to stand by and do nothing!'

'That's exactly what I expect you to do - and that's what you're going to do! Bill, you've known all along that Lethe isn't

a human child. Hell, you were there when she was born.'

'Don't remind me,' he 'mumbled, massaging his calf. 'I still have scars from where that mutant hell-twin of hers tried to chew off my leg.'

'Lethe was born of two human vampires - creatures such as myself. But she's obviously not a vampire. I used to think she was some kind of seraphim, but now I'm not so sure. But whatever she might be, the seraphim have-considered her important enough to be placed under their protection. And for all we know, this cocoon stage is perfectly natural. The fact that Fido won't let us touch her suggests that interfering with this - I dunno, call it a larval stage - would be dangerous to Lethe.'

Palmer shook his head and got up to retrieve the bottle of tequila he kept in the pantry. Sonja was surprised by how old he looked. The psychokinetic pummeling he'd taken certainly didn't help matters; his face was puffy and bruises were slowly blossoming under his eyes, as if he'd been struck by the world's biggest air hammer.

They had first met two and a half years ago, when Pangloss

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) hired him to track her down. Not even three years, and already he was starting to age. His once-dark hair and goatee were now liberally shot with gray, and his nose was beginning to dominate his face. Palmer had changed dramatically during their time together, what with his obsession with Mayan body modification, and now he was starting to grow old. Funny that she hadn't noticed that before. Was this how it was between vampires and their human lovers? One day they're a handsome youth, the next they're old and withered? She had to struggle to remember his age. Forty-three? Forty-four?

How old was that in human years?

And, without realizing it, she began to think of Judd. About his youth and his innocence and his humanity ...

'Sonja?"

She reined in her thoughts, slamming them behind a protective wall. 'Yes, Bill?'

He was sitting there at the table, the tequila bottle at his elbow. Palmer watched her with eyes as distant and unreadable as a dead man's.

'Nothing. Nothing at all.'

6.

Sonja woke up just as the sun went down. She showered immediately, making sure to wash away the previous evening's blood and semen. Then, wrapping herself in a kimono she had picked up in Tokyo, she went to check on Lethe's cocoon.

She soon discovered that it was no longer resting on the child's bed but out on the patio, with Fido still standing guard.

Palmer was in the kitchen, drinking tequila. In the three days since Lethe retreated into her golden cocoon, Sonja had yet to see Palmer do anything but drink. Maybe he ate while she was asleep, but she doubted it.

'What's the deal? Why's the cocoon on the patio?'

'Dunno,' Palmer slurred, lifting the bottle to his lips. He wasn't even bothering with the rituals of salt and lime. 'Mebbe it got too big for the bed. Fucker's almost six feet long now.'

Sonja glanced out the window facing the courtyard. Palmer was right. The cocoon had grown at least another foot in length.

'All I know is that when I woke up today, it was sittin'

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) out on the patio. Guess laughing boy there moved it while I wasn't looking.' Palmer set aside the bottle and began pawing through the pile of mail and invoices on the kitchen table.

'By the way, you got a letter ...'

Sonja stiffened. 'A letter? Addressed to me?'

'That's what I said - here.' Palmer retrieved a business length envelope from the pile and handed it to her. 'There's no return address, but it was mailed from the States.

There's a New York City postmark.'

She took the letter, smiling grimly. He was still the private detective, even pickled in tequila. Or perhaps being this drunk made him feel more like the old Palmer, the one who had existed before he learned the truth about the things in the shadows.

The envelope was nondescript, addressed to 'Sonja Blue c/o Indigo Imports'. The address was typed, not handwritten.

There was no way to tell who - or what - had tracked her down. Was it a friend or foe? The only way for her to find out was to open it.

Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. Sonja carefully unfolded it, frowning to herself. It was a photocopy

of a news clipping from a national paper. The headline read:

'Wife of Millionaire Industrialist Suffers Stroke.'

'What's it say?' Palmer asked, one eye fixed on her as he tilted back the tequila bottle.

'My mother's in the hospital.'

'You're not really going, are you?'

Palmer watches me from the door of our bedroom as I busy myself with packing my bag. He's drunk Sloppily so. His sense of betrayal wraps itself around me like a damp towel left to mildew in a gym locker for a few weeks. I know it should make me feel bad, but I'm getting angry with him instead. I always get mad when people try to make me feel guilty.

'Of course I'm going! What the hell does it look like?' I snap, shoving a pair of leopard-skin bikini briefs, a black lace camisole, and a Revolting Cocks T-shirt into my flight bag.

I go to the wall safe and retrieve the special strongbox I keep my various passports and credit cards in. I dump them onto the bed, rummaging through them for an appropriate alias for my trip to the States. I decide to use Anya Cyan and pocket the corresponding identification.

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'But what about Lethe? You can't just leave her like this!'

'Bill, I can't do anything for her while she's like this! What the hell difference does it make if I'm here or not?'

'Sonja, please. Don't go. I need you to stay. Please.'

I turn to look at him and I'm shocked to see how quickly he's fallen apart He hasn't shaved since Lethe went into the cocoon, nor has he bathed - or changed his clothes, for that matter. With his earplugs, tattoos, and nose piercings, he looks like a demented Humphrey Bogart from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. His weakness radiates from him like carbon monoxide fumes from a busted muffler, and I turn away for fear he will sense the disgust welling inside me. I know, then, that I cannot stay in that house another hour; for it is in the vampire's nature to exploit - even destroy - those weaker than themselves.