Paint It Black (7 page)

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) The demon Malfeis sports the exterior of a flabby white male in late middle age, dressed in a loud plaid polyester leisure suit with white buck loafers. A collection of gold medallions dangle under his chins, and he holds a racing form in one hand.

I slide into the booth opposite the demon. 'I need magic Mal.'

'Don't we all? Say, what's with the face? You can reconstruct better than that!'

I shrug, one hand straying to my swollen left cheek. The bone squelches under my fingertips and slides slightly askew.

Heavy-duty facial reconstruction requires feeding for it to be done right, and I deliberately skipped my waking meal.

'You tangle with an ogre? One of those vorgr punks?'

'Leave it be, Mal.'

Malfeis shrugs. 'Just trying to be friendly, that's all. Now, what kind of magic are you in the market for?'

'Binding and containment'

The demon grunts and fishes out a pocket calculator. 'What are you looking to bind? Ghost? Elemental? Demon? Muse?

There's a difference in the prices, you know.'

'Myself.'

'Huh?' Mal halts in mid-computation, his exterior flickering for a moment to reveal a hulking creature that resembles an orangutan with a boar's snout

'You heard me. I wish to have myself bound and contained.'

'Sonja--'

'Name your price, damn you.'

'Don't be redundant, girlchick.'

I sigh and heft a knapsack onto the tabletop. 'I brought some of my finest acquisitions. I've got hair shaved from Ted Bundy's head just before he went to the chair, dried blood scraped from the walls of the Labianco home, a spent rifle casing from the grassy knoll, and a cedar cigar box with what's left of Rasputin's penis in it. Quality shit I swear by its authenticity.

And it's all yours, if you do this for me.'

Malfeis fidgets, drumming his talons against the table. Such close proximity to so much human suffering and evil is bringing on a Jones. 'Okay. I'll do it. But I'm not going to take responsibility for anything that happens to you.'

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'Did I ask you to?'

'Are you sure you want to go through with this, Sonja?'

'Your concern touches me, Mal. It really does.'

The demon shakes his head in disbelief. 'You really mean to go through with this, don't you?'

'I've already said so, haven't I?'

'Sonja, you realize once you're in there, there's no way you'll be able to get out, unless someone breaks the seal.'

'Maybe.'

'There's no maybe to it!' he retorts.

'The spell you're using is for the binding and containing of vampiric energies, right?'

'Of course. You're a vampire.'

I shrug. 'Part of me is. And I'm not letting it out to hurt anyone ever again. I'm going to kill it or die trying.'

'You're going to starve in there!'

'That's the whole point.'

'Whatever you say, girly-girl.'

I hug myself as I stare into the open doorway of the meat locker. It is cold and dark inside, just like my heart. 'Let's get this show on the road.'

Malfeis nods and produces a number of candles, bottles of oil, pieces of black chalk, and vials of white powder from his black gladstone bag. I swallow and step inside the meat locker, closing the heavy door behind me with a muffled thump.

From the diaries ofSonja Blue.

Malfeis lighted the candles and began to chant in a deep, sonorous voice, scrawling elaborate designs on the outer walls of the locker with the black chalk. As the chanting grew faster and more impassioned, he smeared oil on the hinges and handle of the door. There was an electric crackle and the door glowed with blue fire.

Malfeis's incantation lost its resemblance to human speech as it reached its climax. He carefully poured a line of white powder, made from equal parts salt, sand, and the crushed

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) bones of unbaptized babies, across the threshold. Then he stepped back to assess his handiwork.

To human eyes it looked like someone had scrawled graffiti all over the face of the stainless-steel locker, nothing more.

But to Pretender eyes, eyes adjusted to the Real World, the door to the locker was barred shut by a tangle of darkly pulsing veve, the semi-sentient protective symbols of the voodoo powers. As long as the tableau remained undisturbed, the entity known as Sonja Blue would remain trapped within the chill darkness of the meat locker.

Malfeis replaced the tools of his trade in his gladstone bag. He paused as he left the warehouse, glancing over his shoulder.

'Goodbye, girly-girl. It was nice knowing you.'

'I'm looking for Mal.'

The bartender looked up from his racing form and frowned at Judd. After taking in his unwashed hair and four days'

growth of beard, he nodded in the direction of the back booth.

Judd had never been inside the Monastery before. It had a reputation for being one of the more sleazy - and unsavory French Quarter dives, and he could see why. The booths lining the wall had once been church pews. Plaster saints in various stages of decay were on display. A Madonna, skin blackened and made leprous by age, regarded him from above the bar with flat, faded blue eyes. She held in her arms an equally scabrous Christ-child, its uplifted chubby arms ending in misshapen stumps. Hardly a place to party down big time.

He walked to the back of the bar and looked into the last booth. All he saw was a paunchy middle-aged man dressed in a bad suit smoking a cigar and reading a racing form.

'Excuse me?'

The man in the bad suit looked up at him, arching a bushy, upswept eyebrow.

'Uh, excuse me, but I'm looking for Mal.'

'You found him.'

Judd blinked, confused. 'No, I'm afraid there's been some kind of mistake. The guy I'm looking for is black, with dreadlocks...'

The man in the bad suit smiled. It was not a pleasant sight

'Sit down, kid. He'll be with you in just a moment'

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) Still uncertain of what he was getting himself into, Judd slid into the opposite pew.

The older man lowered his head, exposing a bald pate, and hunched his shoulders. His fingers and arms began to vibrate, the skin growing darker as if his entire body had become suddenly bruised. There was the sound of dry grass rustling under a high wind and thick, black dreadlocks emerged from his scalp, whipping about like a nest of snakes. Judd was too shocked by the transformation to do anything but stare.

Mal lifted his head and grinned at Judd, tugging at the collar of his turtleneck. 'Ah, yes. I remember you now. Sonja's renfield.'

'M-my name's not Renfield.'

Mal shrugged his indifference. 'So, what brings you here, boychick?'

'I'm looking for Sonja. I can't find her.'

'She doesn't want to be found.'

'I have to find her! I just have to! Before she does something stupid. Kills herself, maybe!'

Mal regarded the young human for a long moment 'Tell me more.'

'Something... happened between us. She feels responsible for hurting me. She sent me this letter a few days ago.' Judd fished a folded envelope out of his back pocket and held it out to Mal. 'Here, you read it'

The demon plucked the letter out of its envelope like a gourmet removing an escargot from its shell. He unfolded the paper, noting the lack of signature and the smears of blood on its edges.

Judd,

I can never be forgiven for what was done to you. I was not the one who did those things to you. Please believe that.

It was her. She is the one that makes me kill and hurt people. Hurt you. I promise I'll never let her hurt anyone, ever again. Especially you. I'm going to do something I should have tried years ago, before she became so strong. So dangerous. So uncontrollable. She's sated right now. Asleep in my head. By the time she becomes aware of what I'm planning to do, it'll be too late. I'm going to kill her. I might end up killing myself in the bargain, but that's a chance I'm willing to take. I won't let her hurt anyone

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) again, damn her. I love you, Judd. Please believe that. Don't try to find me. Escape while you can.

'She doesn't understand.' Judd was now close to tears. 'I do forgive her. I love her, damn it! I can't let her die!'

'You know what she is.' It wasn't a question.

Judd nodded. 'And I don't care.' 'And why have you come to me?'

'You know where she is, don't you?'

Malfeis shifted in his seat, his eyes developing reptilian slits. 'Are you asking me a question?'

Judd hesitated, recalling Sonja's warning that he should never, under any circumstances, ask Mal a question.

'Uh, yeah.'

Mal smiled, displaying shark's teeth. 'Before I respond to any questions put to me, you must pay the price of the answer. Is that understood, boychick?'

Judd swallowed and nodded.

'Very well. Tell me your name. All of it.'

'Michael Judd Rieser. Is that it? That"s all you want? My name?'

'To know a thing's name gives one power over that thing, my sweet. Didn't they teach you that in school? Come to think of it, I guess not.'

'What about my question? Do you know where Sonja is?"

'Yes, I do know.' The demon scrawled an address on the back of the letter Judd had given him. 'You'll find her here.

She's inside the meat locker on the ground floor.'

'Meat locker?'

'I wouldn't open it, if I were you.'

Judd snatched up the address and slid out of the pew. 'But I'm not you!'

Malfeis watched Judd hurry out of the bar with an amused grin. 'That's what you think, boychick' He leaned back and closed his eyes. When he'reopened them, he had shoulder length hair pulled up in a ponytail, a ring in his nose, and four days' growth of beard.

It is cold. So very, very cold.

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) I am huddled in the far corner of the meat locker, my knees drawn up to my chest. My breath drifts from my mouth and nostrils in wisps before condensing and turning to frost on my face.

How long? How many days have I been in here? Three? Four?

Twenty? A hundred? There is no way of telling. I no longer sleep.

The Other's screams and curses keep me awake.

Let me out! Let me out of this hellhole! I've got to feed! I'm starving!

'Good'

You stupid cunt! If I starve to death, you go with me! I'm not a damned tapeworm!

'Couldn't prove it by me.'

I'm getting out of here! I don't care what you say!

I do not fight the Other as it asserts its ascendancy over my body. The Other forces stiffened limbs to bend, levering me onto my feet. My joints crack like rotten timber as I move. The Other staggers in the direction of the door. In my weakened condition I have difficulty seeing in the pitch-black of the meat locker. I abandoned the sunglasses days ago, but as my condition worsened, so did my night vision.

The Other's groping hands close on the door's interior handle.

There is a sharp crackle and a flash of blue light as the Other is thrown halfway across the locker. It screams and writhes like a cat hit by a car, holding its blistered, smoking hands away from its body. This is the twentieth time it's tried to open the door and several fingers are on the verge of gangrene.

'You're not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever!'

Fuck you! Fuck you! I'll get you for this, you human-loving cow!

'What? Are you gonna kill me?'

I crawl back to my place in the corner. The effort starts me coughing again, bringing up black, clotted blood. I wipe at my mouth with the sleeve of my jacket, nearly dislocating my jaw in the process.

You're falling apart. You're too weak to regenerate properly ...

'If you hadn't pounded your head against the fuckin' wall trying to get out in the first place--'

You're the one that got us locked up in here! Don't blame me!

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'I am blaming you. But not for that' It's that fucking stupid human again! You think you can punish me for that? I didn't do anything that you hadn't already fantasized about!

'You raped him, damn you! You almost killed him!'

I didn't, though. I could have. But I didn't

'I love him!' My voice cracks, becomes a sob.

You don't love him. You love being mistaken for human. That's what you're mad about; not that I molested your precious lover boy, but that I ruined your little game of Let's Pretend!

'Shut up.'

Make me.

From the diaries of Sonja Blue.

Judd checked the street number of the warehouse against the address that Mal had given him. It was one of the few remaining warehouses in the district that had not been turned into trendy yuppie condominiums. There was a small sign posted on the front door that read 'Indigo Imports', but nothing else. A heavy chain and double padlock secured the entrance, and all the ground-floor windows were barred. But there had to be some way of getting in and out. He rounded the side of the building and spotted the loading dock. After a few minutes of determined tugging, he succeeded in wrenching one of the sliding corrugated metal doors far enough open to slip through.

The inside of the warehouse was lit by the mid-afternoon sunlight slanting through the barred windows. The whole place smelled of dust and rat piss. The meat locker was on the ground floor, just where Mal said it would be. Its metal walls and door were covered in swirls of spray-painted graffiti. What looked like a huge line of coke marked the locker's threshold. Judd grabbed the door's handle and yanked it open. There was a faint crackling sound, like that of static electricity, and a rush of cold, foul air. He squinted into the darkness, covering his nose and breathing through his mouth to try and mask the stench.