Sunglasses After Dark

by Nancy A. Collins

  He died June 2, 1978. I was with him when it happened. By that time his eyes were so pale a blue they were without color, like those of a child fresh from the womb. The left side of his face was slack and his left hand a useless snarl of meat and bone.

  "Sssonja…" he slurred. He seemed more alert than usual that day. "Do you see it?"

  I scanned the bedroom on all levels; and as far as I could see, we were alone. "See what, Erich?" I turned around in time to watch his eyes close. I didn't need to touch him to know he was dead. I sat there for a long moment, my sense of loss so overwhelming it couldn't register as an emotion, and stared at what was left of my friend and tutor.

  I was named Ghilardi's principal heir and executor of his will. I inherited the house, the grounds, the family fortune, and a professionally forged set of documents that provided Sonja Blue with a recorded past.

  I also inherited Ghilardi's notebooks and the typewritten manuscript concerning his greatest discovery: me. This was the book that would lay to rest the idea that Erich Ghilardi was a kook. I burned every last page in the central hall's marble fireplace.

  After I'd consigned Ghilardi's reputation to the flames, I drove my Jaguar to Geneva. After wandering the streets for several hours, I found myself standing on the shores of Lake Geneva. I stared at the same lake on which Jean-Jacques went boating with his beloved dullard, Marie-Thérèse, and where, fifty years later, a poet's wife gave birth to a monster.

  I was certain I would not find my answers in Europe. I rang Ghilardi's solicitors and liquidated my entire inheritance, except for two books, and bought a oneway ticket to the Orient.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  « ^ »

  I went to Japan, hoping its saffron-robed holy men and black-garbed assassin priests might know more of the Real World than the scientists and occult investigators of the West.

  While waiting for the bullet train that would take me into Tokyo from the airport, I noticed a young girl dressed in the drab uniform the Nippon educational system had copied from German private schools earlier in the century. She looked to be no more than twelve or thirteen, although the roundness of her face made her seem even younger.

  She was chewing gum and paging through a comic book the size of a telephone directory. I glimpsed a woman, naked except for strategic shadows, cowering before a hulking giant. The giant was covered with scars and tattoos. A poisonous snake with dripping fangs was wrapped around the monster's erect penis; rather, it was wrapped around where the giant's erect penis would have been, if the censors hadn't airbrushed it out.

  The schoolgirl extruded a bubble the color of flesh, flipped the page, and continued reading. The giant pressed his thumbs into his protesting victim's eyes. I realized that finding answers here would not be as easy as I'd thought.

  I soon discovered that coming to Japan had been a mistake. I stalked the human beehives of Tokyo, frustrated in my search for Pretenders. Everyone in the city wore a mask; it is a part of their culture. Pretending to be something they're not is second nature to the Japanese. Their thoughts formed an impenetrable wall I was neither skilled enough nor ready to understand. I felt even more alienated than I had in Europe.

  Still, it wasn't a complete loss on my part. I was in a mammoth downtown Tokyo department store; it was a busy afternoon and it seemed as if the entire country had picked that day to come and shop. Despite the crowds, I was able to maintain suitable personal space. I was unsure whether their reluctance to come too close had to do with my being gajin or Pretender.

  Either way, I followed the path of least resistance, allowing myself to be buoyed along in the general direction of the shoppers. The Japanese equivalent of canned music blared from hidden speakers, mixing with the roar of a thousand alien voices.

  I found myself standing near a bank of elevators. There were two young Japanese girls, dressed in feminine versions of the department store uniform, posted outside the lifts. Both wore spotless white gloves and spoke in artificial falsetto voices, like cartoon mice. The elevator girls smiled fixedly, bowing to the customers with machinelike precision, and made what looked like ritual hand gestures. Their arms rocked back and forth, like metronomes, indicating which lifts went to which departments. I watched the puppet women as they repeated their robotic gestures over and over for an endless stream of shoppers, their smiles never faltering. I was suddenly overcome by the need to cry. Strange. I didn't weep at Ghilardi's death.

  I was surprised to see a small, bowed man with the wrinkled face of a sacred ape looking up at me. At first I thought I was being accosted by some exotic variation of Pretender. Then I realized I was looking at a very old man.

  "You come away from this," he said in English. "No place for you." He gestured with a crooked finger and began threading his way through the dense packing of consumers. Intrigued, I followed him. The old man's aura was roseate, but I could not divine if he was of Pretender origin.

  The bent old man led me to a traditional Japanese house, sequestered from the bustle of the street by ancient stone walls. He showed me his garden, with its intricate patterns raked in the sand, and shared tea with me.

  His name was Hokusai, and he was a descendant of Shinto wizards and samurai swordsmiths. He had been trained in the art of "seeing beyond" by his grandfather, and was adept at identifying people and places of power.

  "You shine very strong. Maybe too strong. And sometime there is darkness at the edge of the bright." He frowned, unable to fully explain himself in English.

  I suspected that even if I spoke fluent Japanese he would still have trouble finding the right words. "Why did you ask me to follow you here?"

  "I watch you watch elevator girls. The dark was eating the bright."

  I nodded that I understood and the wrinkled monkey face beamed happily. For the first time since Ghilardi's death, I found myself at ease in another's presence.

  The old gentleman told me that, as a child, his grandfather filled him with stories of the elemental spirits that had once ruled the island kingdom before the days of the first emperor. The old wizard had been adamant that the spirits would return within his grandson's lifetime and wished that Hokusai be trained in recognizing their signs. Now it seemed his grandfather's predictions had come true.

  I was humbled by the old man's hospitality and what I knew to be uncharacteristic openness to a foreigner. I didn't have the heart to tell him he was sharing tea with a monster. It was Hokusai who reforged the silver dagger Ghilardi had given me years ago, transforming it into a handsomely mounted switchblade. The handle was fashioned of teak and the inlaid dragon adorning it from gold leaf. The small ruby that was the dragon's eye also served as the triggering stud. Hokusai refused payment, claiming that he owed it to the ghost of his grandfather.

  I left Japan after a month's stay. My next port of call was Hong Kong. I never saw or heard from Hokusai again.

  What occurred in Hong Kong was bound to happen, eventually. I'd succeeded in forestalling the inevitable for years. Hong Kong is so alien a place for Westerners, even inhuman ones, that it's easy to forget your past… and your future. There is only now in Hong Kong and that is, in itself, timeless.'

  I found myself in one of the city's huge open-air bazaars, if you consider a street jammed with fish peddlers open air. The noise was terrific, hundreds of voices yelling, haggling and arguing in as many dialects. Street urchins of indeterminate sex and age waved chintzy, mass-produced gewgaws in my face, shrilling "Yankee! Cheap! You buy!" After my failure in Tokyo, I limited my mind scan to random samplings of the crowd. Then I saw him.

  He was an elderly priest, dressed in the saffron robes of a Buddhist monk, a neat smear of red on his shaven brow. Though he hobbled with the aid of a gnarled stick, his power was evident to those who could see. The monk paused in his journey and glanced in my direction. His placid, moon-round face was replaced by the features of a fox. I tried to go after him but a group of housewives, haggling over the price of snake, blocked my p
ath. By the time I reached the spot I'd last seen him, the monk was nowhere to be found.

  "You look somebody?"

  It was a long-haired, seedy Chinese male in his late twenties who'd spoken. He lounged against a nearby doorway, arms folded across his chest. He wore a pair of much-mended American jeans and a faded T-shirt bearing the logo bruce lee lives.

  "Yes. There was a monk here just a second ago. Did you see where he went?"

  The man nodded. "I see. I know priest. Show you where he go. Ten dollar."

  Too eager to be cautious, I shoved a note in his hand. He smiled broadly, revealing crooked teeth the color of wild rice. He led me through a series of narrow streets that took us away from the main thoroughfares, emptying into a squalid, dimly lit alley.

  "Priest live here. Very holy man. Very poor," explained my guide.

  I was dubious of his claim, and I knew what was going to happen, but I couldn't risk the chance that he was telling me the truth. I took a hesitant step into the alley. "Are you sure this is where—"

  I never finished the sentence. There was a sharp blow on the back of my skull and the pavement tilted up to greet me. Stupid. My guide's hands were on me, searching my pockets with the speed and skill of a professional mugger. He found the switchblade and paused to admire the craftsmanship. His thumb brushed the tiny ruby dragon's eye and the knife revealed itself. He knelt and pressed the tip of the switchblade against the hollow of my throat, teasing a drop of blood from my skin.

  "Good knife. You got money, Yankee? Dollar? Traveler check? What you got for me? Huh? What you got?"

  He didn't like my answer.

  My right hand clamped around his throat and I saw his eyes bulge inside their epicanthic folds. He forgot about slicing my throat and tried to pull my hand away from his windpipe. I felt his larynx turn to pulp. I got back on my feet, keeping my erstwhile guide at arm's length. Normally, I would have snapped his neck and let it go at that, but I was in a foul mood. I had come close—so close—to finding what I was looking for, only to have this geek throw me off the scent.

  My attacker was turning colors, his tongue so swollen he'd bitten halfway through it. He made a noise like mice trapped in a shoe box. Vaguely curious, I looked inside his head to see what his thoughts might be, now he faced death.

  I found an open sewer. My guide was a nasty piece of work, as humans go. He'd spent several years in Vietnam buying children orphaned by the war and selling them to brothels in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, and Manila. When that no longer proved profitable, he sold junk to the Yankee GIs until the South Vietnamese bureaucracy chased him out of Saigon for failure to pay bribes on time. Now he lured Anglos into dark alleyways under pretenses of sightseeing or sex, murdering for the contents of their wallets or a wristwatch. It was safer and easier than dealing with the Yakuza or the Tong, and he had a low overhead.

  I withdrew, disgusted by my victim's lack of humanity.

  Who's the monster, Sonja? You or him?

  I flinched. I wasn't used to the Other speaking directly to me. The strangling man at the end of my arm looked like a perverse hand puppet. Spittle, blood, and foam flecked the corners of his mouth. His tongue was the size and color of a black pudding.

  "Monster" is such an unfair word, don't you agree?

  I was aware of the hunger building inside of me. A cold sweat broke across my brow and I began to tremble.

  What makes the word "human" so damned wonderful? You're always mourning your humanity, denying yourself the power and privilege that are yours by right for fear of becoming inhuman. You fight to keep from doing what is natural for you, simply because you pride yourself on being human. What is being human? Is it being like him? Why don't you put him to some use, eh? You'll be doing society a favor . . .

  I was standing on the mountaintop with Satan whispering in my ear. And I was weak.

  He was so close to death when I took him there was no real fear left in him, only resignation. The flesh of his throat was unwashed and tasted of sweat and dirt. The faint odor of ginger clung to him.

  I trembled as if caught in the heat of erotic passion. His skin was taut and soft under my lips as I felt his weakened pulse throb against the points of my fangs, inviting penetration.

  "No. I can't do this, even if he is murdering scum. I didn't come all this way… not for this."

  Didn't you? You knew what his intentions were the moment you saw the alley. You knew but you went ahead. Why? Hasn't it been leading up to this ever since you first tasted human blood and found it good?

  "No! I can buy blood on the black market. Not like this…"

  Ah, yes. The blood in the bottles. Sterilized for your protection. How fucking bland. You really do disappoint me, Sonja… Or do you?

  The hunger was a dark bubble in my gut. I could smell the bastard's blood waiting for me on the other side of his skin. I couldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. But I did.

  The man jerked as my fangs entered the warmth of his jugular. It was so sweet. I realized how bland and characterless the bottled blood really was. The Other was right: nothing can compare to the taste of blood stolen fresh from the vein. It was the difference between beer and a fine champagne. It felt so natural to have hot, fresh human blood squirting into my mouth. I drank like a woman rescued from the desert, afraid of wasting a single drop.

  Wave after wave of pleasure washed over me. I had been a prostitute for five years, but that was the first time I experienced orgasm.

  By the time I was finished, my would-be murderer was very pale and very dead. I left him in the nameless alley, along with my humanity.

  More disturbed than enlightened by my sojourns in the East, I decided to visit the scene of the crime: London. It seemed the logical place to start if I was going to track down Morgan. It was 1979, ten years after Denise Thorne's mysterious disappearance and my secret birth.

  Things were very different from the last time I was in town; the punk music scene was building up the PR to jump the Atlantic. The hippie sentiments of peace and love had curdled into bitterness and resentment. Yet, in their own way, some things were the same.

  The Apple Cart Discotheque had mutated over the past decade and turned into Fugg's. Fat tarts in cheap wigs and cheaper makeup did the bump-and-grind down a runway for the edification of a handful of hard-core rummies. The dancers chewed gum and made crude fuck motions with their hips. The men scattered up and down the runway looked about as aroused as dead newts.

  I crossed to the bar, my memory decorating the dive with phantom go-go girls and jet-setters in paisley-print shirts.

  The bartender gave me a sour look. "Ain't hirin'. Business is bleedin' awful."

  "I'm not looking for a job. Do you know a man called Morgan? Claims to be a peer." I handed him a fiver.

  The bartender shrugged. "Mebbe. Think that's what he calls hisself. Used to, rather. Ain't been around in a while."

  "How long?"

  "Year. Mebbe two. Suits me if th' bleeder never shows his face again. Every time he comes 'round, one of me best girls ups and quits. Never fails. They go packin' off with him without givin' proper notice and I never see hide nor hair of 'em again." He shook his head. "Just can't figure it. What would a toff like him want with birds like that? Me, I met the wife at a church social."

  Everywhere I went, the story was the same: yes, they knew Morgan, no, they couldn't say when he might show up again and could care less if he did.

  Morgan kept to a schedule, at least in London, and I was unlucky enough to have returned during his off-season. I realized it might be another ten years before he made the circuit again, since time means little to Pretenders. The idea of waiting chafed. I wanted to have my revenge while I could still feel it.

  I consoled myself by cleansing London and its neighboring districts of undead.

  Clearing out the revenants was easy enough, although the vampires—the ones with enough skill and brains to pass for human—proved to be a different matter. Most of them posed as nondescript shopgi
rls and junior bank clerks—no one you'd look at twice. Although I had no trouble locating them, they usually succeeded in giving me the slip.

  I was in a small pub near the East End when I spotted a pale young woman nursing a pint at one of the back tables. She was dressed dowdily, and rather unremarkable in appearance. Just another lower-middle-class working girl out for her weekly glass of stout. But there was something odd about the way she brought the glass to her lips and how the amount of ale stayed the same. I shifted my vision to see what she looked like in the Real World.

  An ancient crone was seated where the girl had been, her face hideously wrinkled. When she noticed me watching her, she put down her drink and left the pub. I hurried after her. The hag moved faster than I'd expected and was already a block ahead of me. I saw her dodge into one of the mews that riddle the district. I followed, switchblade in hand and eager for confrontation. Instead, I found nothing. Not a trace. But how did she know?

  "That you were goin' t' kill her? Have y' tried lookin' in th' mirror lately, pet? You got 'big-time predator' writ all over!"

  He emerged from the fog, dressed in a silk suit the color of reptiles, a foul-smelling French cigarette hanging from his lower lip. I grabbed him by his narrow lapels. He looked a bit nonplussed, but there was no fear in his voice.

  "Here now! Don't go wrinklin' th' material, luv."

  "Who are you? How'd you—"

  "Know what you were thinkin'? It's me job, ducks."

  Something dark and fast with sharp edges scampered through my mind. I grunted and let go of him.