Paint It Black (27 page)

Sonja shrugged. 'I'm wearing it, aren't I?'

Morgan nodded and returned to looking out over the city.

'It's beautiful, is it not?' he said, gesturing with a sweeping movement of his left hand. 'The city, I mean. It's alive, you know. Not like a human is alive. More like a simple one-celled organism or a sponge. Hundreds upon thousands upon millions of humans eating and drinking and shitting and fucking and dying in such a small physical space - their minds and life forces united on a subconscious level, connecting them on a wavelength unacknowledged but not unfelt.

Then again,

perhaps a better metaphor might be that of a herd of cattle..

Have you ever seen a stampede?'

'Only in the movies.'

'It is a fearsome thing, even for creatures such as we. It is nothing more than nature stripped bare, naked and unreasoning.

The smallest thing can trigger a stampede - sometimes nothing at all. If the cattle are edgy, the slightest shift in air pressure can turn them from docile, cud-chewing cows into mindless, raging beasts. The effects can be as devastating as a tornado or an earthquake-- and just as sudden. This city is like that. It is constantly on the brink of a stampede.'

'You're not telling me anything I don't know.'

'Am I not? I'm sorry. I don't mean to be pedantic.' Morgan pointed in the direction of the Lower East Side. 'Right now a drunken stepfather, enraged by his wife's refusal to give him sex, is strangling her three-year-old son. He's going to put the boy's body in the incinerator chute of his housing block to avoid detection.'

Morgan hopped down from his observation point and trotted to the opposite side of the deck, waving a hand in the direction of Central Park. 'Police are still searching for the body of an eighteen-month-old child of tourists from Iowa, reported snatched from his stroller by a wild-eyed Negro. In truth, the child was beaten to death three days ago by his parents and buried in a shallow grave in their backyard.'

Spinning on his heel like a demented weathervane, Morgan dashed towards the southwest corner. 'A balding closet queen with some political clout is chatting up a surlily handsome young man in a discreet piano bar in the West Village. The

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) surly-looking young man has raped and killed eight older gay men over the last three years, chopping up their bodies and wrapping them in plastic garbage bags before tossing them out on lonely highways upstate.'

Morgan swerved again, like a compass needle being drawn to true north. 'In Harlem there is a dark, stinking one-room

apartment with no electricity, no running water, no heat, no furniture, no food. There are eight children, ranging from, nine months to seven years old, locked in the apartment while their respective mothers and fathers sell themselves or each other for crack.' He grabbed one of the pay telescopes mounted on the edge of the railing and swung from it like a child on a monkey bar, the delight in his face rendering his scars momentarily invisible. 'God, I love this town!'

Kill him, you stupid bitch! Don't stand there staring at him like a love-struck cow - slit his throat from ear to ear!

Sonja bit her lip until the blood came. The Other's voice stung her like scorpions and whips, but she refused to act. She had spent so many years fighting its influence that resistance to its demands had become automatic.

'You seem troubled, my child. Is something wrong?'

Morgan was watching her. His good eye seemed concerned, but its damaged twin was what drew her attention. It had been a long time since she'd had to rely on simple physical cues to decipher another's thoughts and emotional state. There was no way she could easily tap into his mind - Morgan's skill at psionic cloaking was equal to her own.

'Why did you ask me to meet you here?'

'Because I wish to continue our conversation from last night, my dear. And this time I doubt we'll be interrupted quite so rudely.'

'Nothing has changed between us, Morgan. I'm going to kill you, no matter what.'

'If that's the case, why aren't you killing me now?'

'I... I just don't-feel like it right now.'

Morgan clucked his tongue at her. 'Come now, child, don't insult me by telling me such a wretched lie. You may be an angry girl, but you're not stupid. You possess a rational brain, of that I've no doubt. Perhaps you've stayed your hand because you've come to realize that there is no longer any point to your vendetta?'

Sonja fixed him with an angry glare, but the sight of his

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) dead eye made her look away. 'What makes you think you know what's going through my head?'

'A parent knows its child - even a prodigal, such as yourself.

There is a current that exists between us - do you not feel it?

You and I are simpatico, far more than any get I've spawned.

We are left hand and right hand, the tide and the shore, yin and yang. We are the same, you and I.'

'I'm nothing like you!'

'Do you drink the blood of living things?'

'Yes.'

'Have you ever taken pleasure from the pain and sufferings of others?'

'I--'

'Be truthful!'

'Yes, but they deserved-'

'Do you find humans blind and ignorant sheep, dragging the rest of creation with them on their mad dash to extinction?'

'Not all of them--'

'You are exactly like me! The one difference is that you still cling to the ghost of your humanity! You've somehow gotten it into your head that humans are to be pitied and envied instead of used. Why should you hold yourself to ideals that the vast majority of humans have discarded? Our kind do not create evil. Humanity does that all on its own.

But we of the enkidu - and others of the Pretending races are not averse to manipulating human misdeeds to suit our needs. We did not invent the Nazi concentration camps, or the Russian gulags, or the Khymer Rouge killing fidds, or the Serbian rape camps, but we would be fools to turn our backs on such fertile sources of... nourishment'

'I've never had anything to do with anything like that--'

'Haven't you? Then why do you prefer to spend your time in the inner city? It's not just a matter of camouflage. Don't you feel a high every time you prowl a ghetto neighborhood - the more crime-ridden the better? Does it make you feel more alive

- more alert- to trawl for prey in the most hopeless sectors of town? Oh, I'm sure you're telling yourself you're stalking those

neighborhoods because that's where your prey is most likely to be. But there's more to it than that, isn't there? A lot more.'

He was right. She'd never been willing to admit it to herself

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) before, but now there was no denying it. It was like he knew her, knew her in a way no other had before. The intimacy was both disturbing and compelling.

'Do you know what it's like to be lonely, Sonja?' Morgan's voice was quiet but intensely personal, as if they were standing by a country lake instead of high atop a skyscraper. 'Do you know what it's like to be surrounded by people but to be painfully, horribly alone? Do you fear that you might someday disappear into the emptiness that once held your heart?'

'Yes.' Her voice was so small she wasn't even certain she'd actually said the word aloud. Perhaps she hadn't.

'You know nothing of loneliness,' Morgan hissed, his voice suddenly growing a hard, rusty edge. 'You won't even have an inkling of what it's like for another century or two! To stand outside the flow of time and watch those you once called friends, confidants, and lovers wither away and die like leaves on a tree - knowing that no matter how many servants and consorts you surround yourself with, in the end you will always be alone. And the most horrible thing of all is that you will come to realize that you have no equal. There is no one who will ever truly fulfill your needs, challenge your expectations, or understand what drives you.

'The humans who are drawn to our kind are far from worthy companions. They're attracted to our inhumanity our monstrosity, if you will. They love us for what we are not, not for what we are. Even the brightest and most loyal renfield is little more than a pet. One that you will outlive and, in time, forget. How could it be otherwise?

'As the years bleed into decades, the decades lengthen into centuries, your memory will become so vast you'll be bored by everything and everyone. Nothing will be new. No sight will be unseen. No act undone. Without diversions and stimulation, the Ennui will eventually claim you. Meddling in the affairs of humans provides us with a certain amount of stimulation, but even that wearies after a while. That was why I spent so much time and energy trying to create my own breed of vampire. A desire to have my progeny rule the earth was a motivating factor, I'll admit to that. But mostly it was an attempt to keep myself ... involved; to provide myself with new challenges.

'Of course, it failed horribly, largely because of your interference.

I've realized in the years since then that my plans were foolish, perhaps even dangerous. Anise and Fell were made of weaker stuff than yourself, but they proved themselves stronger than I had imagined possible. And that is what prompted me to thinking that I have been surrounding myself with inferiors. All vampires do so - we naturally fear those as strong as ourselves. In vampire society there are only two positions - slave and master. To not be one is to be the other.

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) We tend to ensure that our gets will be subservient. We rarely infect those who show signs of the inner strength, intelligence, and ambition that, in time, will result in Nobles. For a vampire to assert its will and claim its place in the hierarchy, it must break free of its Maker. And few of us are willing to pay for companionship with our very existence.'

'You didn't kill Pangloss.'

Morgan fell silent for a moment, his face unreadable.

'Pangloss ... did not need to be killed. When the time came, he recognized me as his better. He surrendered his control over me in exchange for his continued existence. As I said, ours is a society of masters and slaves. That is why, in the five hundred years since I threw off his yoke of obedience, Pangloss was never able to do me genuine harm.'

'Perhaps it was because he loved you.'

Morgan barked a humorless laugh.

'His last words were of you.'

Morgan did not look surprised, but instead seemed to take it as his due. 'He's dead, then?'

'The Pangloss you knew no longer exists.'

Morgan shrugged. 'He no longer concerns me. What concerns me is you. I have found in you a strength unparalleled in others of my kind. You possess a freshness, a vitality, I consider most invigorating. Perhaps it is your extreme youth, as the enkidu measure such things, that inspires me. But when I look at you, when I am with you, I feel as if the world has been remade anew and that I am its conqueror.'

'What are you saying?'

'Only that I have had numerous brides in my past, but I have yet to take a queen.' Morgan gestured to the winking lights that stretched as far as the eye could see 'We could rule the vampire and human worlds alike, you and I. With your immunity to silver and ability to travel during the daylight hours, we would be invincible. Every Noble would be forced to swear allegiance to us and submit to our will. We will be unstoppable. We will be forever.'

'What makes you think I'd go along with it?'

'I don't. But what else have you to do?'

'I could kill you.'

'And then what? Will you marry? Raise children? Prepare

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) for retirement? Will killing me turn you back into Denise Thorne? Once I'm gone, what then will provide you with a reason for your existence? Will you continue mindlessly killing vampires simply because you have grown accustomed to it? Or will you succumb to the Ennui, as did Pangloss?

'You must cast aside your childish understanding of how the world works. All Nobles have blood vendettas against one another, but none of us truly wishes the other's demise.

Otherwise we would soon grow tired of the game and find ourselves withering away from boredom. You, on the other hand, are a genuine psychopath, killing the very thing that provides you reason for continuing.

'I blame myself, in part, for your madness. After all, if I had been there for you, schooling you in the nuances of Noble society, you wouldn't be as confused as you are now.

Child, you have been acting on instinct out of ignorance and self-loathing, doing what comes naturally to our kind but without understanding the why and wherefore of it all.

Tell me the truth, Sonja, don't you weary of constantly battling with yourself? Don't you long to surrender the burden of conscience? Don't you weary of forever being on guard against losing control?'

Sonja's eyes seemed to look somewhere far away. 'Yes,' she whispered.

'Then cast away your hatred! Put aside your weapon!

Embrace me as a queen 'Would her king, and the struggle will be over! We were meant to be together, Sonja. Ignorance and fear have kept us apart for these many years - but no longer! Do it, Sonja. Just do it.'

His words were so soft. So sweet. So soothing. Some of what he said made no sense, but a lot of it hit home. Sonja felt something within her soften and begin to give way. She suddenly felt so tired. So very, very tired. All she wanted was to curl up and fall into a deep sleep.

The Other dug its fingers into her forebrain, shrieking and spitting like an enraged mountain lion. The pain that filled her head was so huge there was no way she could even scream.

Stupid cunt! He's reeling you in like a fish! Morgan's an expert at finding vulnerable spots and manipulating them to his advantage! All this sweet talk about