Paint It Black (21 page)

'Pangloss.'

Jen grunted as he pushed himself out of the easy chair. 'Most astute. He sent me instead of one of his servitors because of your predilection for slaying vampires on sight. I am to bring you to him.'

Sonja shook her head and folded her arms over her chest.

'I have no interest in seeing Pangloss again. I've had my fill of his mind games and trickery. You can tell him what I told Luxor - if he wants Morgan dead, tough. I don't subcontract.'

'You misunderstand. Pangloss doesn't give a rat's ass about Morgan. Not anymore, that is. He wants to see you for other, more personal reasons.'

'Such as?'

'He's dying.'

Pangloss's lair was located on the top three floors of a tony apartment building in Gramercy Park. The doorman scowled at Sonja when they first entered the building. However, when he saw Jen his eyes glazed and his face went slack.

'Pangloss has him conditioned,' Jen stage-whispered into her ear as they hurried into the elevators. 'Whenever he sees

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) me or one of the doctor's servants, he goes into a fugue state.

Doesn't remember who came in or when. Otherwise, he's a tough doorman to sneak by unannounced.'

The elevator let them out at the penthouse. A renfield dressed in pale green surgeon's scrubs, his hair under a sterile disposable paper cap, greeted them.

'Thank goodness you brought her! We were afraid you weren't going to make it in time! He's getting worse!'

'The old bastard's managed to continue for over fifteen hundred years,' Jen sneered. 'I'm sure he can hold out for another hour or two.'

The renfield's eyes hardened and Sonja could tell he wanted to say - or do - something to Jen, but was afraid to. If Pangloss was, indeed, dying, then his renfields would soon find themselves stuck for a fix - and protection.

Jen watched the indignant servant storm off, then whispered behind his hand: 'Renfields! They're all such drama queens!'

Sonja was led into a large, handsomely appointed living room. A sliding glass door opened onto a patio that boasted a killer view of the city. The Chrysler Building glowed in the night like an art deco syringe. There was an old man seated in a wheelchair in front of a large television, watching a program with the volume turned down. The old man turned his head toward them and smiled, revealing blackened gums and fangs the color of antique ivory.

'Hello, my child. So good of you to come.'

Sonja was shocked by Pangloss's debilitation. The last time she'd seen him - three years ago - he'd looked as when she first met him, back in 1975. He'd seemed a healthy, vigorous, and virile man in his early fifties, with only a touch of gray in his hair. The creature that sat in the wheelchair, however, looked more like late-era Howard Hughes than classic Cary Grant.

Although he was rapidly going bald, what little hair Pangloss still possessed was the color of a soiled sheet and hung almost to the middle of his back. His frame was wasted and his limbs twisted and infirm. She noticed he had the persistent wobble of a Parkinson's patient. His hands and feet were wrinkled and looked more like the claws of a vulture. He was swaddled in a white terry-cloth bathrobe and an adult diaper. When Luxor had referred to Pangloss as 'the old man' she'd been puzzled by his choice of words. Now she understood.

'How have the mighty fallen, eh?' gasped the old vampire.

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'I can tell you're surprised - I don't need to use telepathy to know that.'

'Jen said you were dying, but I really didn't believe him.'

Sonja moved closer, circling the thing in the wheelchair, trying to find the flaw in the disguise that would tell her it was all a trick. She couldn't find one.

Pangloss smirked and nodded his head. Sonja couldn't tell if it was in understanding or from a body tremor. 'Jen is a terrible liar. And he always tells the truth. You'd be wise to remember that, my dear.' He fixed his eyes on the dhampire and for a fleeting second some of the old, self-assured Pangloss came back. 'You've done what was asked of you, boy. My renfields have your pay voucher ready. Go now. I would speak with my granddaughter alone.'

Jen sauntered out of the room, pausing long enough to give Sonja a wink before closing the door.

'You must forgive the boy,' Pangloss wheezed. 'His mother indulged him overmuch out of guilt for placing him amongst strangers the first few years of his life. He fancies himself a dhampire. He is more than a little mad because of it, but is better at handling it than the renfields. He rents himself out to humans as well as vampires, did he tell you that? His pain threshold is immense, and he can withstand tremendous amounts of physical punishment without undue side effects. He rents himself out to humans with a taste for others' pain.'

'I've been there,' Sonja muttered.

'But enough about my half-bastard,' Pangloss grimaced.

'Oh, yes, I am the one responsible for his being like he is.

Did he not tell you? The two of you are related, as our kind understand such things. I suspect you want to know why I sent you those news clippings.'

'I know why you sent them - you wanted me to know where Morgan is so I can kill him and you can claim the glory and come off looking big with your bloodsuckin' buddies.'

Pangloss's laughter was somewhere between a chuckle and a choke that made him double over. For a second she was afraid he was going to cough up a lung. 'My dear child, you have every reason to be suspicious of me; I've certainly done nothing to earn your trust in the past. But I am a changed man - or should I say vampire? The Pangloss you see before you is as different on the inside as he is on the outside.'

He motioned feebly with one hand in the direction of the window. 'Could you do me a favor, my dear? Could you push

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) me over to the window? I would look at the night one last time.'

Sonja grasped the handles of the wheelchair and pushed him towards the sliding glass door. She was surprised at how little he seemed to weigh.

'I know this is going to sound stupid,' she said. 'But how can you be dying? I mean, you're already dead.'

'A good question. And not at all foolish. There are those who think that vampires - we who were first known as the enkidu

- are immortal things. And, by human lights, we are. There are vampires who have continued for thousands of years. I myself have walked this earth since the fifth century AD, before Clovis embraced the Christian god. But all things have their spans, even the living dead.

'Oh, the dead can be destroyed - of that you're well aware.

We can be killed by damaging our brains or spinal cords; we can be burned to death; decapitated; or die from exposure to the sun or silver. However, we are impervious to the host of illnesses that thin the human herds, and age no longer affects us once we are resurrected. We are immune to all diseases except one - the Ennui.'

'You mean you're dying from boredom?'

'Wretched, isn't it? But then, this is the fate that awaits all vampires, once they have amassed the power and knowledge to move beyond the night-to-night concerns of keeping oneself fed. What are brood wars but games of chess using animated game pawns? Why do we tamper in human affairs, if not to keep things interesting? Once we have indulged our appetite, what is left for us? We have spent so much time and energy maintaining the semblance of life, we are loath to admit that there is no reason behind any of it, beyond our inborn need to continue our existence.

'In each vampire's span there comes a time when the ceaseless scheming, plotting, and manipulation loses its attraction. When that happens, we begin to question our motives; we

begin to doubt whether our needs truly are as important as we once imagined them to be. That is when the Ennui sets in and we begin to die. That is what happened to me. I can trace the beginning of my fall to Rome, when you marked me with your knife. The wound you dealt me never truly healed...'

He opened his robe and pointed to the long, jagged scar in the middle of his chest. There were dozens, even hundreds of pale, almost invisible scars covering his body, ghostly souvenirs of past battles. Although Sonja knew the wound he pointed to was nearly twenty years old, it still looked fresh. It

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) was also the only part of him that looked genuinely alive.

'I have suffered far more grievous injuries in my existence.

However, unlike the others, this one has refused to be dismissed.

When I look at it I am reminded of how close I came to dying at your hand - and for what? I found myself musing over mortality and what, if anything, I have done in fifteen hundred years of walking this planet.

'I have known great men, both in the field of power and in the arts. I sat in the court of Charlemagne and watched it fall apart upon his death. I kept council with popes and bishops and cardinals of every stripe. I watched the plagues sweep through the cities of Europe. I saw London burn three times. I saw countries rise, kings fall, religions be born. Da Vinci, Botticelli, Bosch, Voltaire, Defoe, Moliere - they all knew me, in my various guises. Yet, I had no real hand in anything that happened. I can claim no influence, except for when I used my manipulative powers to destroy a marriage or weaken a-friendship. My role has never been creative, only that of a parasite, feeding off human society's veins.'

Pangloss's head was trembling so violently she was afraid it was going to snap off and land in his lap. 'They dismiss me, you know. The other Nobles. They always have. Because I never took a title like "baron" or "count" or "duke". I called myself Doctor. I knew better than to lay claim to royalty. Once you do, they're on you like leeches, trying to bring you down. I didn't continue for fifteen hundred years out of dumb luck. They also think me a fool for not feeding on the stronger emotions - I preferred the petty jealousies and intrigues of artistic cliches and intellectual movements to the horror of concentration camps and reeducation centers.

'That idiot Luxor even had the audacity to insult me last time we met! No doubt he was hoping to provoke me into declaring a brood war, seeing how weak I had become. Luxor is such a coward! And Nuit's no better! I've grown so weary of it all, Sonja. What is the point of continuing if I must spend the remainder of my days dealing with jackanapes such as Luxor?

I am so tired of it all... so very tired.'

'But, I still don't understand. If you have, as you say, lost interest in playing the game, then why did you send for me?'

Pangloss's lower lip trembled and Sonja was shocked to realize how much, at that moment, he reminded her of Jacob Thorne.

'Because I'm scared, Sonja. I'm scared of dying by myself.

I want you to be with me when it happens.'

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) She didn't know why she did it, but Sonja agreed to escort Pangloss to the necropolis.

There were several necropoli scattered throughout the great cities - and several of the once great. They were sacred ground to all Pretenders, no matter their breed. Sonja knew New York possessed one such place, although she had no idea where it was located.

'It's accessible only through tunnels connected to the old subway system,' Pangloss explained. 'There is an access point in the basement of this apartment building. We start from there.'

It was clear from the way Pangloss's servants behaved that none of them liked the idea of their master heading for the Elephant's Graveyard. They were all very agitated and kept talking amongst themselves, eyeing Sonja cautiously.

Sonja had never liked renfields. While they served a purpose, she'd never understood why vampires elected to surround themselves with servants who were nothing more than junkies.

Renfields were addicted to vampires. They had an uncanny knack for tracking down the undead. Not to mention a taste for their own destruction. Almost all of them were sensitives of one sort or another, and all were heavily dependent on their masters for whatever it was that kept them going, be it drugs, sex, pain - or the semblance of sanity.

But now, watching them flutter about their dying master like moths around a fading light, Sonja finally began to understand.

Vampires spent their existence doing nothing but taking from others - be it blood or the psychic energies of the living.

Vampires were needful things. But with their renfields they could experience, in a flawed fashion, what it was like to be needed.

'Please, master, I beg you to rethink what you're about to do,' whispered the renfield who had greeted Sonja and Jen when they first exited the elevator, his voice made hoarse by unshed tears.

'There's no putting it off,' Pangloss replied, levering himself out of his wheelchair. 'I've gone too far to turn back now.' He took a feeble step forward and nearly fell. Sonja reached out and grabbed his elbow, steadying him as best she could.

'But, master, what of us? What will become of us once you're gone?'

'You'll be free to make your own ways in the world, just as you have been all along,' Pangloss sighed 'Come, Sonja, it's

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) time to go.'

There were two basements to the apartment building. The first one was clean and well lit and had recycling bins and a set of coin-operated washer-dryers for, the tenants. The second basement was dark and damp and smelled of age and rat piss and could only be reached by a special elevator in the penthouse.

Sonja held Pangloss's elbow, helping him along as they wound their way through stacks of moldering newspapers and steamer trunks dating from the last century. He pointed at a narrow, low-set iron door. There were strange runes chiseled into the lintel, written in the brain-twisting script of the Pretender tongue. Pangloss produced a key from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her.