Paint It Black (29 page)

Cindy comes out of the kitchen trailing soapy water behind her. In one hand she clutches a carving knife. Sam is still watching the TV, his back to her. The nape of his neck is the only thing she can see. It's like the rest of him doesn't even exist. If she squints her eyes a little, she can see the dotted line going across it.

Edgar Tremouille hears the screams coming from outside his window and goes to look. Screaming on the streets surrounding Times Square isn't particularly rare, but the sheer volume - and the sounds of crunching bumpers and smashing glass - hints at something besides the usual territorial dispute between hookers. As he leans out his window, a cab jumps the curb and plows into pedestrians on the sidewalk. The driver is hunched over his steering wheel and grinning like a fiend as the cab scatters drug dealers, hookers, drag queens, and tourists in every direction. A second cab slams into a car with Jersey plates. The drivers get out and begin kicking and punching each other in the head and the groin, shrieking like wild animals. A crowd gathers, their eyes too wide and their faces too empty to be human. The cabby grabs the guy from Jersey and rams his head through the windshield.

As the cabby staggers back, blood and busted safety glass dripping from his hands, a Molotov cocktail sails through the air, smashing against the front of the Papaya King stand across the street, spraying the crowd with burning gasoline.

There are screams and shouts of anger and the smell of burning hair and roasting flesh. Edgar Tremouille has seen enough. He goes to the closet where he keeps his rifle. The End Times have arrived. The Tribulations have begun. And it is time for the Chosen to make their stand. He starts out by sniping at the drag queens. They are the ones who disturb him the most. He tracks one in particular with his scope - the one he'd given twenty dollars to let him suck its dick a couple of months ago. Edgar regretted the act the moment it was done.

And it especially bothered him that the drag queen recognized

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) him and called his name whenever he walked by after that.

He screams as he shoots the drag queen. He screams as he shoots each and every one. He doesn't know why. He's killing sinners, but it feels like he's shooting part of himself. When there are no more drag queens, he starts in on the blacks.

Rodrigo isn't crying anymore. The TVs still turned up real loud, but Yolanda doesn't hear it. There is a lot of noise next door - sounds like a domestic argument. A real knockdown and-drag-out. Not that such things are rare where she lives.

Yolanda decides it's time to take the garbage to the dumpster.

She tosses an empty can of Raviolios and a dirty diaper into the bag. She rams her foot down on the refuse to make some more room. Rodrigo's hand pops up, the fingers already starting to stiffen. Yolanda tells herself it's just a doll. Just a doll.

Father Ignatius counts his rosary and thanks God for taking away the visions. However, the prayer beads are wrapped around the neck of an elderly parishioner who reminds him of his mother. The smell of animals fills the confessional.

The streets of the city seethe with madness long contained and left to fester for years, even generations. Pedestrians knock the coffee cups from the hands of beggars, kicking them in the kidneys as they scramble on their hands and knees to recover their scattered change. Firemen armed with axes battle any who try to put out the blazing fire stations.

Policemen fire tear-gas canisters point-blank at the heads of the rioters filling the street, while other officers wade into the crowd with nightsticks and drawn guns. After a few minutes the line between rioter and police dissolves, as the baton-wielding policemen start beating each other as well as the unruly populace.

The carriage horses at Central Park scream and rear back on their hind legs, desperate to jump their traces, as swarms of hungry people boil from the park's surrounding greenery, armed with rocks and sticks and appetite.

Windows smash as looters climb into Fifth Avenue storefronts to liberate merchandise. Waiters and busboys douse the patrons of five-star restaurants with alcohol and set them alight, turning them into living cherries jubilee and banana fosters. Nurses in neonatal wards go from incubator to incubator, disconnecting the life-support systems. Wild-eyed Hasidic men and women cry out to Mosiach and hurl cinder blocks from the roofs of their housing developments. Thousands of undocumented immigrants pour into the narrow streets of Chinatown, torching the sweatshops .

Gunfire is everywhere. Burning buildings dot the city like candles on a cake. The screams of the hunted and the hunters fill the night. Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs are tearing at themselves, locked in a blind, claustrophobic frenxy, like the berserkers of old who whirled themselves into a killing

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) fury by slashing themselves with their own knives. Those unaffected by the insanity huddle in fear and wonder if it is the end of the world - or just the >end of New York?

For some, there is no difference.

Sonja struggled to get back on her feet. The ice field was bucking and shaking like a wild animal, sending pillars of ice shooting upward. The sky overhead had given way from perpetual night to a pulsing aurora borealis. She had to get out of this rapidly disintegrating limbo and back into her physical body. Whatever was happening to her material self was obviously pretty major. But every time she tried to concentrate and take herself back into the materialworld, another shelf of ice shot upward, blocking her path.

She had to

She had to get hold of herself. None of this was real. Not in the physical sense, anyway. She was inside her head, not trapped on an antarctic glacier. All she had to do was open her eyes and she'd be free...

There was a sound like a cannon going off and the ground beneath her exploded in a shower of ice. Stunned, Sonja stared in mute horror as the Other emerged from its icy womb. It was huge, its head and shoulders blocking out the sky. The Other smiled and reached for her with a claw the size of a Buick.

Sissster, it growled. We can never be safe until he who Made us is destroyed. As long as he exists, we will be weak. Join us, sister. Join us so that we might be reborn yet again.

18.

Morgan's ears were still ringing as he picked himself off the floor of the observation deck. There had been a flash and something like a clap of thunder the second after he fired the gun. He was lucky the force of the concussion hadn't sent him flying over the edge.

He got to his feet and staggered over to where Sonja's body lay sprawled. Curls of steam rose from her like a turkey fresh from the oven. He wanted to rejoice over the fall of an enemy who had cost him so dearly, but the laughter refused to come.

Then Sonja sat up.

Curse the instruments of man's dominion! His aim had not been true! Instead of blowing her skull apart like an overripe cantaloupe, the bullet had grazed the right side of her head. Although she was missing her right ear and a fist-sized patch of her skull now gleamed wetly for all to see, she was still very much alive.

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'Morgan?'

He quickly returned the gun to his pocket and knelt beside her.

'I'm here, child. Are you all right? You fell into a seizure.'

Sonja seemed dazed, as if waking from a drugged sleep.

'You were right, milord,' she whispered. The lenses of her sunglasses were cracked and she removed them with trembling hands. 'I have allowed myself to be led astray by misplaced hatred. Your enemies have worked to turn me against you for their own ends. I would see them suffer in your name.'

As Morgan helped her to her feet, she allowed her forehead to drop against his shoulder. Morgan struggled to keep his face from pulling into a triumphant sneer. All was not lost.

If he could actually break her to his will, her death could still be avoided. But if the fire in her belly was extinguished, if she became just another of his adoring brides, then there would be no reason to love her. What provoked his passion was her deadliness, her ferocity, her threat. Part of him found the prospect of crushing her will and keeping the physical shell as a reminder of his victory appealing. Yet another

side of him hesitated.

Sonja's arms slid about his waist, pulling him closer. She looked up into his scarred face with eyes the color of blood.

Eyes so very much like his own. 'Hold me,' she sighed. 'I'm so very tired, milord. Please hold me.'

'I will do so gladly, but only after you put aside your weapon.'

Sonja glanced down at the switchblade she still clutched in her hand. Her fingernails had dug so deeply into the flesh of her palm that blood dripped from her fingers. Her face contorting in disgust, Sonja hurled the silver knife away from

her, sending it sailing over the edge of the observation deck into the night.

Morgan tightened his grip on her. She felt so soft, so vulnerable; it would be so easy to slide into her mind and crack her ego open like a rotten nut. He lowered his face and their lips brushed. She reached out hungrily for him, pulling him into a full embrace, her tongue searching for and finding his own. And their minds met and were one.

They were standing beside a meditation pool in a Japanese rock garden. Dappled koi swam just below the jade-green surface, mouthing crumbs of bread. Morgan's imago wore the costume of a shogun of the Edo period. Sonja's imago was dressed as Sonja always was. Her black leather jacket creaked as she pinched off another handful of breadcrumbs

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) and tossed them into the pool.

Sonja looked up at Morgan and smiled. Her eyes were once more hidden behind slivers of mirrored glass, only now the lenses seemed to grow directly from her brow ridge and merge into her cheekbones. 'Are you going to try and kill me now?

Is that why you picked such a comforting mindscape? So I would be lulled into trusting you?

Morgan shifted uncomfortably, the corner of his mouth jerking fitfully. The features belonging to his imago were whole but he had grown accustomed to smiling with only half his face. 'I don't know what you mean, my love. You are my queen - why should I kill you?'

Sonja shrugged and resumed feeding the goldfish. 'I dunno.

Because I'm dangerous? Because I'm a threat to your continuance?

Because I trashed your plans for world domination?

Because I fucked up your face? Because I killed your most trustworthy servant? Because I scare you? How about just because?'

'What if I was going to kill you? What would you do to stop me?

'Nothing.'

'I don't believe you.'

Sonja shrugged again. The piece of bread in her hands had yet to dwindle. 'Believe what you like. But I won't stop you.

I'll even give back your chimera. Assuming you still want it, that is.'

'Are you serious?'

'I'm not laughing, am I?' Sonja unzipped her jacket and reached inside the breast pocket, removing a small ivory statue. She dropped it onto the ground and the statue began to twitch and writhe, growing larger. Within seconds the three-headed tiger with the scorpion tail was standing beside her, lashing its barbed tail and growling.

Morgan reached out with one hand and the chimera began to melt and warp, like a chalk drawing caught in the rain. The chimera became a yazuka-style tattoo on his bared chest.

There. You have your chimera back. I hope you're happy.

You can kill me now, if you like. I won't stop you.'

He could tell she wasn't lying. He stepped back and drew his samurai sword from its scabbard. Instead of being forged from steel, the blade was made of black volcanic glass. He

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) drew back the sword as if he was readying to tee off. Sonja watched him placidly for a moment, then resumed feeding the fish. The sword cut through her neck as easily as it did the air, sending her severed head arcing into the meditation pond.The

body stood for a few seconds more, blood gouting from the stump like a fountain, before collapsing.

Morgan wiped her blood from the blade, marveling over the ease of it all, yet concerned by her failure to defend herself.

After all, this was the woman who had wrested a part of his very self from him in combat and made it her own. He had expected something resembling a fight.

There was a thick, bubbling sound from the direction of the pool. Morgan glanced up in time to see the waters first turn red as blood, then black as ink. The koi bobbed to the surface, their gill slits straining as they gasped their last. The middle of the pool was aboil, as if an underwater geyser was about to erupt.

A female figure emerged from the heart of the pool, rising on the befouled water like Aphrodite from the foam. Her skin was black as polished night, her dark hair thick and wild, like the mane of a lion. Her teeth were white as pearl and curved into fearsome fangs and her tongue was long and narrow, like that of a cat. She had four arms and in each hand she gripped an instrument of destruction: a shield, a sword, a noose, and a submachine gun. Around her neck was a garland of skulls and about her hips she wore a girdle of severed hands. When she turned her head, Morgan could see three other faces: one was that of a virgin, the second that of a blue-skinned hag, and third was Sonja's.

The black-skinned demoness nodded to Morgan as if acknowledging a debt. When she spoke, all four of her faces

chimed in. 'I thank you, father, for recreating me anew. Before I was separate and unequal. Now I am whole.'

Morgan wasn't sure what to make of the black-skinned demon-goddess that stood before him. Was she one of Sonja's tricks?