Paint It Black (30 page)

'Who are you? What are you doing with Sonja's face?

As if in answer the black-skinned demon-goddess brought her blade against the shield, making it ring like a gong. Morgan cried out and clutched his ears.

'Don't you know me, father? I am your death.'

The demoness laughed then, her multitude of voices filling Morgan's skull. He watched, awestruck, as she began to grow, until she towered over him like a building.

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'I am the Dark One! I am the Queen of Nightmares made flesh! And you made me, sweet father, as all children are made: out of ignorance and appetite. I am your daughter, Lord of the Morning Star, and your executioner.'

Panicking, Morgan's imago cast aside its human form in favor of something more suitable for battle. His skin became mottled and scaly as his head widened and flattened itself. His arms and legs were rapidly absorbed by his torso as his body first doubled, then quadrupled in size and length, until he was the size of a city bus. Hissing his defiance, Morgan flared his hood and rose to challenge his enemy.

The demon-goddess laughed and began to dance, her four arms weaving in rhythmic patterns. Morgan reared back and spat a stream of venom at her eyes, but she blocked it with her shield.

'There is no denying me, sweet father,' she chided 'I am the Slayer of the Dead.'

Morgan struck again, hoping to plunge his fangs into the demoness's naked thigh, but she moved too fast, slipping her noose about his neck and yanking it tight. Morgan hissed and flailed, his body lashing back and forth like a builwhip.

'I have been a long time being born, sweet father,' the voices chorused 'And birthing is hungry work. I would feed now.'

The demoness carefully laid aside her weapons while keeping a firm grip on the head of the giant cobra. Morgan shrieked and hissed and struggled with all his might, but there was no escaping the noose. The dark-skinned destroyer licked her lips with her long red tongue, her eyes gleaming like polished skulls, and sank her fangs into the back of her captive's neck with a satisfying crunch.

Any who might have seen them then would have mistaken them for lovers, locked in a passionate embrace. And, on some level, that was the truth. But if they looked closer, they would see the crackling sheath of purple-black energy that pulsed around the couple like St Elmo's fire, and how the aura surrounding Morgan was beginning to stutter and pale, while Sonja's pulsed like a drum.

Sonja opened her eyes and found herself staring into the face of a dead thing. The illusion of life that Morgan had maintained for so many centuries had finally failed him. His skin was the color and texture of parchment. His once-dark hair was now white and patchy, like a dog with mange. His flesh had melted from his bones, leaving him little more than a dry husk, a pitiful scarecrow outfitted with fangs. Although he looked like an ancient pharaoh, his eyes still burned with stolen life.

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'Enough,' he wheezed 'Please--'

'No,' she answered, her voice that of the black-skinned demon-goddess. 'More. I need more. Give me the chimera.

Give me your love.'

Morgan raised a stick-like arm in a feeble attempt to stay her, but it did no good. Undeterred, Sonja sank her fangs into what was left of his throat. The vampire lord shrieked as a dark fire burst from his eyes and ears, his brain spontaneously combusting. Sonja continued to feed, oblivious to how Morgan's limbs withered and drew in on themselves disappearing into sleeves and pant legs. Only when there was no more to drain did she let him drop.

What was left of Morgan lay at her feet, surrounded by a mound of clothes. It looked something like a cross between a pickled monkey and a petrified fetus, the discolored skin pulled tight over brittle bones. Even though she had drained it of seven hundred and fifty-three years of stolen energy, the creature still clung to the pretense of life. It lifted its oversized head on its feeble stalk of a neck and looked around with blind eyes, its dry bones rattling like the limbs of a marionette.

'Forgive me,'it piped.

She brought her boot heel down on its skull, shattering it like a light-bulb, and stepped over the pathetic remains of the thing that had created her and climbed onto the ledge of the observation deck. Her hands seethed with a black fire laced with tongues of crimson. The energy she had stolen from Morgan coursed through her veins, filling her with euphoria.

Her body vibrated like a tuning fork, juiced on the ultimate high - the life-force stolen from the undead. Morgan's power surged through her body, amplified by the negative energy that hung over the city like a pall of smoke. She reached out and pulled the madness that had shaken the city back into herself. The wind was so strong now that the television tower groaned to itself like an old man. She grinned and stretched her arms upward, as if to embrace the stars. And she stepped off the ledge into empty air.

She called the winds to her and they came, bearing her aloft as if she was a leaf. She giggled in delight, like a child on a roller coaster, and opened her arms wide, spiraling high into the night sky. She sped along, oblivious to the dazed and frightened populace trembling naked and bleeding in the streets below her. Those forced from their homes by fire found themselves gathering in the open parks, waiting the arrival of the sun. Those who dared look up saw the silhouette of a woman streak across the sky, then quickly

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) looked away.

Sonja shot upward, higher than the tallest buildings, like a sky diver in reverse. She was so jazzed on the energy pulsing through her she didn't care where she was going or who saw her. After years of ignorance and fear, she now knew the truth. She knew who she was. What she was. Tonight the last step in her creation had been reached. Her evolution was complete. She was The Angry One. The Shatterer. She Who Cannot Be Turned Aside. She was the Ultimate Predator: the vampire who feeds on vampires.

The Nightmare Queen began to sing its victory song, banging its sword on its shield as it danced on the body of

its defeated foe. The faster she danced, the more intense the black fire surrounding Sonja's flesh became. Her ears were filled with the sound of drums and the clashing of swords and the ringing of bells. Flush with victory and the exhilaration of birth, the newborn Destroyer touched down atop the World Trade Center and roared a challenge to the world.

Deep within the bowels of the Black Grotto, Lady Nuit froze, the scalpel she'd been using to flay a stock analyst from Connecticut falling from her fingers and sticking, point-first, into the floor. The human chandeliers began to moan again.

'Shut those damned fools up!' Nuit snarled, her voice dipping lower as Luxor's features and testes slid from their hiding place. 'I just got them to quiet down! I've had enough of their complaining tonight!'

'Yes, milord,' said Jen, smiling behind his hand. 'I'll see to it immediately.'

The buzz wore off while she was out over the Atlantic Ocean.

One minute she was filled with enough energy to pulverize continents, the next she was riding on fumes. The first thought that ran through her mind was: Wow, wotta rush!

The second was: What the fuck--? I can't fly!

She plummeted from the sky like Wile E. Coyote suddenly realizing he'd run out of cliff, falling a hundred feet before hitting the water. She couldn't even see the land.

Six hours later, a beachcomber on Coney Island stared in amazement as a woman clothed in a leather jacket, jeans and boots staggered out of the surf, a length of seaweed wrapped around her neck like a Hawaiian lei. Before he could react to the strange sight, a man appeared from out of nowhere and threw a blanket over her, hurrying her off

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) the beach.

Part 3.

When the Dead Return.

'From feiryland she must have come

Or else she is a mermaiden,'

Some said she was a ghoul, and some

A heathen goddess born again.

John Davidson, 'A Ballad of a Nun'.

19.

It didn't take the jungle long to reclaim the house . The porch is alive with creepers and other blooming vines. The hammock I once shared with Palmer is now a mildewed, tattered mess, hanging from the hooks in the rafters like a monstrous spiderweb. A couple of empty Tecate bottles lying on their side amidst the litter wink at me darkly in the afternoon sunlight The front door is unlocked but the frame is badly warped from the heat and humidity, making it somewhat difficult to open. I inadvertently yank it off its hinges trying to open it Inside, the house smells of mold, rising damp, and rotten garbage.

Small lizards skitter out from underfoot as I go from room to room. Some of the windows are broken, allowing leaves and other detritus access to the house, but it looks as if no one has set foot in it since I left, months before. I'm not really surprised The locals are exceptionally superstitious when it comes to Senorita Azure.

I step out into the courtyard. It looks desolate, with dead leaves collecting in the corners and weeds poking their rough heads between the tiles. The fountain no longer burbles to itself and the stagnant water has grown a scum of algae.

The back of the house is even more overgrown than the Front. The rapidly encroaching jungle has swallowed Lethe's old swingset and monkey bars. A wild pig and her piglets burst from cover at my approach, fleeing in the direction of the forest. I follow them, but not with the intention of hunting.

The pig path is still there, of course. It's been there for several hundred years, and it will be there for several hundred more.

I climb to the top of the neighboring hill, where the ruins of the ancient Mayan observatory once stood. I dust off one of the tumbled limestone blocks and sit on it lotus-fashion, and cast my mind into the jungle.

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) Hours later, as the sun begins to sink, I receive an answer to my summons in the form of a man emerging from the jungle.

He wears a jaguar skin draped over one shoulder and an unbleached linen loincloth. Jade earplugs stretch his lobes almost to his shoulders, and his lower lip boasts a similar ornament. Tattoos of Mayan sky serpents and jaguar gods swarm his naked torso and arms. His graying hair is pulled up into a warrior's topknot adorned with the feathers of brightly colored parrots. In one hand he carries a machete and across his back is slung an AK47.

'Hello, Bill.'

'I don't go by that name anymore,' he replies. 'I'm called Chac Balam now. Lord of Jaguars.'

As he moves closer, I see that a disembodied hand rides his shoulder. It waggles two of its six fingers in my direction like antennae.

'I see you've still got Lefty with you.'

Palmer allows himself to smile. 'It would be hard to do without him. He's my good right hand. So to speak.' The smile disappears as quickly as water on a hot griddle. 'Why are you here, Sonja? Why did you come back?'

'Don't worry, I'm not here to try and force your return to my service, if that's what you're thinking. I just wanted to see you one last time, that's all. I wanted to tell you that everything's okay.

I... I'm not the woman I once was.'

Palmer frowns and squints at me, looking for things only he might see. He nods, and some of the tension drains from his face. 'You are different. You're more - I don't know - together. It's as if the Other no longer exists.'

'Oh, she's here all right,' I laugh, thumping my chest 'Just as Denise is still here. I guess you could say we have reached an understanding. Hard as it might be to believe, the Other actually saved my ass. Kept me from doing something really stupid. We no longer war amongst ourselves. What about you?

Are you happy with your new life?'

'I've founded a guerrilla group, of sorts, composed largely of campesinos of Mayan descent. The government ridicules us in the media, but they're scared. They hunt us like animals, but they've yet to catch us. We keep our supplies and weapons hidden in the sacred cenotes. I guess you could say it's a back-toQuetzacoatl movement.' He shakes his head and I glimpse some of the old Palmer, the one I used to know. 'I'm a pragmatic man. A reasonable man. You know that But I had a dream not ttoo long ago where I saw the world change. It was fierce and frightening, but not hopeless. It was as if the world was being reborn, not

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) destroyed. All I want is for my people to prepare themselves for that day, away from the craziness and ugliness of the world that now exists. Sonja, am I crazy?'

'No. Just prescient'

There is a movement in the trees behind Palmer, but he does not seem alarmed. He glances over his shoulder and nods, then turns back to me.

'I must go. Farewell, Sonja. Please don't misunderstand me when I tell you this, but I hope we never meet again.'

As Palmer slips back between the trees, I glimpse the figure that waits for him in their shadows. It is the girl, Concha. As she turns to go, I can see her belly is swollen with life.

It is almost dark by the time I get back to the empty house.

I pause for a second, then reenter the building. One last walk through, I tell myself. Just for old times' sake.

The bedroom I shared with Palmer smells like old gym socks.

The sheets on the bed boast large blossoms of fungus. Rats and mice have chewed their way through Lethe's collection of stuffed animals. The kitchen reeks of rotten garbage and whatever was left in the refrigerator when Palmer moved out.

The pile of unopened invoices and bills of lading still sit atop the kitchen table. So does the black mask.