Paint It Black (28 page)

'queens' and 'equals'

is nothing but bullshit! Vampires are either masters or slaves!

He said so himself! He's setting you up, girlfriend, and you're Falling for it like the proverbial ton of bricks! Wake up, damn You! Wake up and kill him - kill him now!

Sonja staggered backward, away from Morgan, as another

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) bolt of agony ripped through her gray matter. Purple-black stars exploded behind her eyelids.

Why are you doing this? Is it Palmer? Is it Lethe? Is this how you're trying to punish us for killing Judd? By letting Morgan turn you into one of his fuckin' gets? If you think I'm gonna sit on the sidelines and let you do that, sister, you've got another thing coming!

Morgan worked to hide his smile as Sonja spun away from his grasp, clawing at her temples and snarling like a wounded thing. A quick check of her aura revealed a spiky nimbus pulsing about her skull, alternating strokes of red and black. Morgan was reminded of sea snails battling one another. The only thing he'd ever seen like it was back in old Bedlam, when the gentry paid the Master of Lunacy to watch the madmen 'at play'. In any case, his little game had paid off. He'd succeeded in pitting the divided elements of Sonja's unstable personality against one another.

Sonja doubled over and vomited a gout of blackish blood onto her boots. Morgan wrinkled his nose in distaste. The bottled stuff.

Inside Sonja's head the scene was hardly as prosaic as what was going on outside it. Sonja found herself floating in a great blue-black void. Although she was in her own mind, her imago - her self-image - was that of her physical body in every detail. She hung in midair, uncertain which was up or down. Not that it mattered. The blue-black nothingness folded in on itself, Like a piece of paper being wadded up by a child, and just as rapidly unfolded.

She was standing on a vast, empty ice field. The wind howled like an angry thing in her ears. A huge, pockmarked moon climbed the starless sky, barely clearing the glaciers on the horizon. The ice gleamed darkly, like the shell of an insect.

Where are you, damn it? she thought, honing her mind until it was a tight, hot beam, scouring the ice floe's surface like a laser sight. Answer me - where are you? You can't hide from me!

The ice beneath her feet pushed upward and outward, sending her flying. She stared in amazement as the Other climbed forth. Although they had shared the same body, the same consciousness for twenty-five years, Sonja had no idea what her vampiric self looked like. She hadn't wanted to know.

The Other looked like one of the hag queens medieval parents had used to frighten their children into good behavior.

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) Her skin was blue and her breasts hung flat and empty against her ribs. Her hands were like the grasping feet of a bird of prey and her talons were as long and sharp as knives.

Although her appearance was more in line with that of a corpse, her lips were obscenely full and seemed to writhe with a life of their own, exposing blackened gums and teeth better suited to an attack dog. She moved like an ape, her red eyes burning with an endless rage.

I'm here.

Sonja got to her feet and pressed the eye of her switchblade.

The silver blade leapt out, glinting in the moonlight Then let's dance, bitch.

The Other dropped onto all fours and scuttled forward like a great scorpion, her joints bending at impossible angles. Sonja tracked as she circled her, shifting to keep the Other in front of her at all times. Part of her wondered if this was what the few humans capable of perceiving the Real World saw whenever they looked at her and shuddered in revulsion.

The Other used this momentary distraction to launch itself, its claws tearing at her midsection as its fangs strained for her throat. And then all conscious thought dissolved and there was only the need for survival.

Morgan stepped back as Sonja dropped onto the floor of the observation deck, spasming in the grips of what looked to be a grand mal seizure. Foam flecked her lips and herf limbs twitched as if someone was running powerful bursts of electric current through them. Morgan did not dare get any closer because she still held her switchblade tightly in one fist - and the blade was exposed.

The surges of psychic energy he'd seen earlier were stronger than before. Now there was sound as well as a light show. Squeals of psionic static ripped through his head like the

scream of a dentist's drill. Morgan grimaced and placed his hands over his ears, even though he knew it would do no good.

He had almost decided against killing her at the last minute, but this was definitely changing his mind. Anything capable of such anarchic energy release was far too dangerous for him to allow its continuance. He glanced up at the 222-foot television tower that jutted from the very top of the Empire State, stabbing the sky like a hypodermic needle. The very air around its tip was beginning to boil. Morgan licked his lips in anticipation. This was going to be good.

The psychic membrane that binds the eight million minds that comprise New York City shudders and flexes in response to the psychic disturbance, triggering minor ripples in the gestalt. Or,

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) to follow Morgan's metaphor, the herd looks up and sees the lightning tearing holes in the sky and begins to grow agitated without really knowing why. Something bad is coming.

Times Square:

Edgar Tremouille is pacing his tiny studio apartment overlooking Times Square. He chews his left thumbnail to the quick and continues gnawing until the blood comes.

Lenox Avenue:

The baby won't stop crying. Normally it doesn't bother Yolanda that much, but tonight it's really getting on her nerves. She wishes her mother would come home from work so she can go out and hang with her friends. She thought having the baby would make her happy. She liked the idea of having something that had no choice but to love her. But now she wishes she was still back in the eighth grade and able to go out when she felt like it. Little Rodrigo stands in his playpen and screams as he rattles its bars. Yolanda turns the TV up as loud as it can go and pulls the kitchen chair so close her nose almost touches the screen. She puts her hands over her ears and tries to shut out the sound of Rodrigo's angry, demanding cries.

Irving Place:

Normally, Sam's fun to be around. More than fun. He's Cindy's one true love. They met at a friend's wedding nine months ago.

She was the bridesmaid and he was working the bar. One thing led to another, and now they're sharing an apartment on the Upper East Side. All their friends envy them their relationship.

'You two are so perfect for one another.'

'We've never seen a couple so happy together.'

Even strangers comment on the perfection of their romance.

Sam is always understanding and supportive and affectionate towards her. But tonight is proving to be a major exception.

He's in a really foul mood for no real reason, sitting in front of the TV and slamming down beers and not talking to her at all except to make hurtful comments about her weight and her taste in friends and clothes and her intelligence.

Once or twice she caught him looking at her with this really weird look on his face. She stands in front of the kitchen sink, washing the dishes, she begins to think about their relationship. Sam is a struggling actor. Cindy works for an investment firm. Cindy is seven years older than Sam. They actually live on her salary, since Sam waits tables in order to keep himself free for any work that might come in from his agent. Although they both work eight-hour days, somehow she seems to be the one to find the time to wash the dishes, handle the laundry, and clean the apartment. The more Cindy

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) thinks about it, the more unfair it seems. The more deliberate it becomes. She wonders if he isn't planning on dumping her

for some cute young thing the moment he gets a serious break in his career. She is fuming hard enough to blow smoke from her ears as she dumps the silverware into the soapy water.

The Church of Our Father the Redeemer:

Father Ignatius closes his eyes and prays for the visions to go away. Holy men are supposed to have visions, or so the Bible claims. But the visions that afflict Father Ignatius are far

from spiritual. In his vision his mother is sitting in her chair near the window, fanning herself and looking down through the chintz curtains at the street below where they once lived

in Hell's Kitchen. She's sweating and fanning. Sweating and fanning. Her dress is open, exposing her massive breasts.

Sweating and fanning. Sweating and fanning. She stares out the window like he's not in the room. His mother hitches up her skirt over her hips and, without taking her eyes off the street outside her window, begins massaging the thing between her legs. The room smells of animals. She twitches a bit and moans, as if she's hurt herself. Then she looks directly at Father Ignatius and smiles, exposing bare gums. She's missing her upper plate. His mother is seventy-two years old.

Sonja was straddling the Other, hammering its head into the black ice. The wind that blew across the frozen void shrieked wordlessly in her ears. She had never been so happy before in her life. Never before had she been able to truly let go of herself, to fight without restraint It felt good. The same way that a long-distance runner feels good once her body has gone beyond simple exhaustion. It was a feeling of freedom, of being severed from time and place and identity.

There was only the now of the act.

The Other snarled and slashed at her with its razored claws, ripping Sonja open from throat to crotch. It chuckled darkly as Sonja scrambled to shove her intestines back into her body. He's planning to kill you. You realize that, don't you?

Sonja's body bowed upward, the muscles straining until she was balanced on the top of her skull and the heels of her boots. The psychic feedback grew louder, causing Morgan to grit his teeth in pain. He had not expected such a dramatic reaction to his tampering. With a squeal of psionic reverb, dark energy leapt from Sonja's midsection, hitting the television aerial like a reverse lightning strike. The wound in the sky began to swell even further, as if filling with pus.

The wind was picking up, growing even stronger than Before. Morgan moved closer to Sonja's prostrate form. As he reached out for her throat, there was a loud crackle, the

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) smell of ozone, and a burst of black electricity. He drew back his hand, snarling in pain. The fingers of his right hand smelled like roasted pork. He'd forgotten about the damned silver crucifix he'd given her! He cursed under his breath and pulled the gun from the interior pocket of his opera cape. Normally he had no use for such crude weapons of destruction. He either killed with his mind or with the hands of others. But Sonja was a very special case.

He sighted down the barrel, aiming at her head.

Too bad it had to be this way. She might have provided him with centuries, perhaps millennia, of interesting duels. But she was too dangerous. He'd told her so himself. She refused to play by the rules. To her, vengeance was more than a game to while away the decades. She was sworn to destroy him and, sooner or later, she would do just that But, worst of all, she tempted him. Tempted him to love. And to love is to be weak and to be weak is to be a slave. And that was something Morgan could never allow to happen. Ever.

'Farewell, my perfect love,' he whispered, and pulled the trigger.

Sonja reeled her guts back in and snapped her body cavity closed behind them, careful not to cut off her spleen or her liver. She kicked the Other square in the mouth, sending teeth flying like Chiclets.

I've had all of you I can stand! I'm sick of hearing your fuckin'

voice screeching inside my ear every damn day! You've ruined everything for me! Everything! And now it's time you paid!

The Other wiped the blood from her mouth and grinned crookedly. You're a real ass, you know that? How about me - you think I've enjoyed being cooped up with a fuckin' goody two-shoes all this time? Always rolling around in self-pity, feeling sorry for yourself because you're a big bad monster? Go ahead, beat on me all you want! Kick me! Punch me! It won't make a damn bit of difference! You've already tried starving me out, but that didn't work either, did it? Face it, sweetmeat, I'm here and there's nothing you can do to get rid of me!

The entire ice field shuddered, as if shaken by a massive earthquake. Both Sonja and the Other looked at one another.

Did you do that?

Fuck no!

There was a cracking sound, as if the world's largest piece of celery was being snapped in two, and a fissure opened up between them. There was a roaring sound and the moon

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) overhead shattered into a thousand silvery fragments. There was another, larger shudder and the chasm widened even further, hurling the Other into darkness.

The sky directly above the Empire State Building looks strange even to casual passersby. The clouds churning about its tip resemble blossoms of ink jetted forth by a frightened octopus.

However, none of the nearby weather services pick up signs of a disturbance on their radar screens. So everyone is at a loss to explain the thunderclap that shakes every window in the city at ten minutes after midnight. But the mysterious thunder does far more than rattle windowpanes. It splits the thin membrane of sanity that keeps New York from chewing its own leg off like a coyote in a trap. And then, to put it politely, all hell breaks loose.