Paint It Black (15 page)

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'She ... she thanked me for taking care of her, for protecting her when she needed it, and she said I was ... I was going to be the first'

"The first? The first what?'

'Bridegroom.' Palmer's lower lip began to tremble and he looked up at Sonja. There was anger and confusion and hurt in his eyes, and for a moment she was once again standing by her mother's grave, staring into the face of her father.

'Bridegroom? Palmer, what did she mean by that?'

'I don't know. All I know is that she ... she made me do it. I wouldn't have done it on my own, you know that, don't you? You know I would never have done something like that--'

'Done what? What did Lethe make you do, Palmer?'

'Fuck her.'

Sonja sat there for a moment, letting what Palmer had said sink in. She didn't know if she was shocked or not.

After all, Palmer hadn't actually sired Lethe. But, then again, what difference did that make? He'd been a daddy to her in every other way. As much as he'd professed to detest children, Palmer had proven himself to be a championship father.

God, no wonder he was in such a state. The human animal came with a lot of behavioral hard-wiring - some of it biological, some of it societal. Hie incest taboo was one of the few that might be both.

Sonja walked over to the window and stared out at the jungle-covered hills.

Forget Palmer. He's meat. Look at him, if you don't believe me: his circuits are blown, whispered the Other. You knew it'd come some day, sooner or later. It happens to all renfields, eventually.

Sonja closed her eyes and dug her fingernails into her palms until the blood came.

'Palmer, what happened then? After ... after Lethe fucked you?'

'She flew away.'

She sighed and turned back to face Palmer. He was still seated on the corner of the bed, staring down at his hands as his fingers battled one another. What had she gotten herself

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) into? She comes home to try and patch up her family, only to find her stepchild has' raped its father and flown off to who knows where, leaving behind a severely traumatized victim of incest.

'Bill?'

'Yes, Sonja?'

'You're going to go to sleep for a little while. When you wake up, you won't remember anything about Lethe. You won't remember her living with us. You won't remember taking care of her. You won't remember anything. It will be as if she never existed.'

'But--'

'Go to sleep, Bill.'

She was out hunting, tracking a wild pig through the dense jungle undergrowth. She brought it down with her bare hands.

It squealed angrily and tried to slash her with its tusks. It struggled hard, like all things do when they know their lives are at stake. Just before she sank her fangs into its jugular, the pig released twin streams of shit and piss in a last-ditch bid for freedom. Or maybe it was simply that scared.

It was well past midnight by the time she returned to the house. She climbed in through the bedroom window, expecting to find Palmer where she'd left him; sprawled, fully clothed, across the bed. Instead, the bed was empty, Palmer gone. She searched the other rooms. Palmer was nowhere to be found in the house.

She stepped outside and cast her mind into the dark, searching for the hum and buzz of thought that had become so familiar to her in the last three years. At first she picked up nothing; then, as she intensified her scan, she found traces of him. He had constructed an elaborate system of telepathic baffles in order to shield himself. But why? She had edited Lethe from his mind. His trauma should have vanished along with his memories. So why was he still trying to keep her from speaking to him mind to mind?

Sonja found a path at the bottom of the property, leading into the jungle. She recognized it as the trail that led to a Mayan ruin on a nearby hill. She'd only been there once, but she knew Palmer visited it often. Quite often, if the condition of the path was anything to go by.

She followed the trail to the top of the hill, where a vine-covered jumble of stone that had once been an ancient observatory sat lumped against the night sky. Palmer

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) was seated on a mammoth block carved to resemble a snarling jaguar. He was not alone.

The woman with him was young, little more than a girl.

She was from one of the native tribes, the ones Palmer called the Lacandon. She was short, with long black hair that hung down between her shoulders like a curtain. They sat side by side, turned towards one another. Palmer held her hand in his and they spoke in a language she did not recognize. Not that she needed to recognize the words to know what they were saying. It was perfectly clear they spoke as lovers.

See? See what your precious little lover boy is doing? The Other's voice was sharp, sweet, and nasty, like honeyed razor blades. This is what happens when you let your renfields run free. It happened with Chaz, now it's happening with Palmer.

In the end, they betray you. They'll always betray you.

Palmer lowered his head, bringing his face close to the girl's.

Sonja could imagine the heat of his breath on the girl's cheek, the smell of him filling her senses, the taste of his lips. She clenched her fists and ground her teeth together. The anger building inside her was thick and hot, like boiling wax. Her head ached and her forebrain felt as if it had been stung by a swarm of wasps. The Other's voice was loud, giggling like a harpy.

You have to put them on a short leash. That's how to keep them in line. That's how Pangloss and Morgan and all the others keep their renfields loyal. You've got to scrape every vestige of free Witt out of them, hollow them out like a fuckin'

jack-o'-lantern. You have to turn them into slaves. Believe me, that's the only way. And they deserve it. They even like it.

'How cozy.'

Palmer jumped up at the sound of her voice, automatically shielding the girl with his body. Sonja felt first a twinge of pain, then anger, at seeing this.

'Sonja!'

She emerged from the darkness like blood from a wound, the jungle moonlight dappling her leather jacket. She paused, leaning against the pockmarked limestone of the ruin like a tough lounging under a street lamp. The girl gasped and crossed herself. Obviously Palmer had told her about his live-in girlfriend.

'So, this is your back-door woman, huh?' She jerked her head at the cowering girl. 'Does she know you're fresh from my bed? Can she smell me on you, like I can smell her?' The last few words came out as a growl as she showed her fangs.

The girl cried out and her nails bit into Palmer's naked upper

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) arm.

'Leave her be, Sonja. Concha's innocent. If you've got to punish someone, punish me.'

'You love her.' It wasn't a question.

Palmer glanced down into Concha's dark brown eyes, now bright with fear, and nodded. 'Yes, I do.'

When she finally spoke, her voice was very still. She could tell this scared Palmer more than anything else.

'I could kill her, you know. I could kill her and make it so you wouldn't even know she had ever existed. It would be as easy for me as wiping a chalkboard clean. Easier.'

'Don't you think I know that?'

'Do you?' She laughed, taking a step forward. It would have been so easy for her to reach into his head and flip the switch, releasing the memories she had hidden from him only hours before. Part of her wanted to see the look on his girlfriend's face when the memories came back, washing over him like a tidal wave, smashing his ego into kindling. That would be fun. She could do it over and over again, wiping his memories of Lethe, then restoring them, so every time he experienced the pain it would be fresh and raw, as though it had never happened before. Maybe she would do that with his girlfriend's murder. Make him forget her, then force him to relive her death over and over ...

Sonja halted, swaying slightly like a drunkard brought up short. Her gaze was fixed on Concha, who returned her stare like a sparrow entranced by a snake.

'Don't do it, Sonja. Don't make me try and kill you.'

Her laughter was as hollow as old bone. 'Try is all you could do. You're no match for me, Palmer.'

'I know that. There's no way I could hope to defeat you.

But I'd try.'

She grunted and came closer, peering down at the cowering girl pressed tightly to Palmer's side. Palmer was watching her face, trying to decide if he was dealing with Sonja or the Other.

Concha moaned slightly and gripped Palmer even tighter than before.

'Why this one? What's so special about this particular female?' Sonja sniffed

'Concha found me naked and sick in the jungle miles from here ... I don't know how I got there, or why I was there,

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) but she nursed me back to health. She helped me get home.

She was there for me when I needed someone.'

'But she's not like you!'

'She's human. I need human, Sonja.'

'You know what I mean! She's not a sensitive. You can never commune with her on the same plane as you and I do.'

'We don't have that anymore, Sonja. You know that as well as I do. You shut yourself away from me the moment you got back from New Orleans. I tried to reach out to you, to try and understand whatever it was you were going through, but it was no use. It's as if you can't be satisfied unless I'm as miserable as you are!'

'Palmer - Bill - you don't understand! I didn't want you to be hurt, that's all. I didn't want you to see me as a monster--'

'It's a little late for that, don't you think?'

'Don't do this to me, Bill. Don't make me beg. I need you.'

'You don't need me. You don't need anyone.'

'That's not true.'

'Isn't it? Sonja, if I stay with you, I'm in danger of losing my soul. I'll end up just like one of Morgan's renfields. Is that what you want for me? Is it?'

Don't bother answering the jerk, just reach into his head and snap his will off at the faucet, hissed the Other. By the way, I liked the bit about killing his girlfriend and making him forget her, then relive her death whenever you feel like a chuckle.

Not bad. Not bad at all. You're getting the hang of this stuff, Girlfriend.

Sonja balled her fists and looked down at her boots. 'No.

Of course not.'

The Other hissed and spat obscenities no one else could hear.

'Then give me my freedom.'

She jerked her head up, moonlight flaring across the mirrored lenses of her glasses. 'You've always had it!'

'Have I?'

Sonja opened her mouth as if to answer, then turned her back on Palmer and his lover.

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'Go.'

Her voice felt tight and sharp, like a piano-wire garrote had been slipped around her throat. She could hear Palmer shift his weight, trying to decide whether to stay or flee.

'Sonja--' There was a hesitancy in his voice.

'I said go! Before I change my mind!'

Palmer grabbed Concha by the hand and hurried from the ruins into the surrounding jungle. Just before he disappeared into the tangled shadows, he turned and called out to her with his mind one last time.

I did love you.

Then he was gone.

Sonja tossed her head back and shrieked like a cornered jaguar. Yowling obscenities, she kicked and pummeled the ancient limestone ruins, obliterating friezes depicting the rule of Mayan wizard-kings a thousand years dead. With a yell that swelled her throat like a bull ape's, she bashed her shoulder against the remaining wall until it collapsed in an explosion of yellowish-white powder.

When it was over, she stood in the middle of her handiwork, trembling like a winded stallion, her face and clothes limned with the dust of centuries.

I loved you too, she thought.

But there was no one there to hear her.

When she got back to the house Sonja was too tired to hate or even feel sorry for herself. The house seemed horribly empty. Lethe was gone. Now Palmer was, too. Within the span of a few days, the little nest she'd built for her family had turned into a tomb.

A featureless black papier-mache mask sat atop a small pile of mail heaped on the kitchen table. As she picked up the mask, a thick business envelope slid off the heap and fell onto the floor. She noticed, with a rash of excitement, that it was addressed to Sonja Blue.

Inside the envelope were several clippings from the New York City/Triborough papers, the oldest dating back six months, the most recent clipping dated two weeks previously.

Most of them were brief, taciturn accounts of the deaths of nameless prostitutes, none of the columns garnering more

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) than an inch. As she placed them on the table where she could read them, she immediately noticed the one item that linked them: 'the deceased was found dressed in a black leather jacket, wearing mirrored sunglasses.'

Sonja picked up the envelope and searched for a letter.

Nothing. The postmark told her it had been mailed in New York City from the Cooper Postal Station. The West Village.

Already the gears were engaged, the wheels in her head turning.

Palmer and Lethe might no longer be a part of her life.

But there was still Morgan.

10.

London, England:

Mavis Bannister was a charwoman. Oh, they had a fancy name for it nowadays - 'maintenance engineer', she thought it was. Just like they had a fancy name for the women's toilet: 'the ladies' lounge'. But, in essence, her job was to swab down the loos at Farquier & Sons.