"Do you still have it?"
He nodded wearily. "God only knows why I kept it. It's a hideous, blasphemous thing."
"Could I possibly see it?"
The tape went from magnetic static to picture without any preface. The picture rolled a bit, then automatically straightened itself. The scene resolved itself into a blurred medium long shot of a figure trussed in a straitjacket and a length of chain. As the camera pulled back, it became evident the scene was shot from above. Claude recognized the video-Sonja's prison as a racquetball court. He remembered Elysian Fields' racquetball court for the better-behaved patients.
There was no sound to go along with the picture, but it didn't matter. There was a crude power to the silent, slightly out-of-focus events not unlike the hard-core stag films he'd seen as a teenager in Mike Goddard's garage.
The video-Sonja shrieked and howled soundlessly, slamming herself against the hard white walls. Blood dribbled from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. She looked drunk. She didn't have her glasses on. Claude realized the graininess of the picture was due to infrared light.
Something fluttered at the corner of the camera's field of vision. A chicken. Someone had thrown a live chicken from the observation deck. It hit the polished wood floor like a bag of suet. The injured fowl flapped about in a feeble attempt to escape the video-Sonja. After she drained the chicken she calmed down. There was a jerky cut, as if the camera had been shut off. The digital readout in the left-hand corner of the screen stated a half-hour had elapsed. This time they threw an alley-wise tomcat into the makeshift geek pit. The video-Sonja ended up with some nasty facial scratches, but it didn't seem to slow her down. An hour later a large dog went sailing off the observation deck. The poor mutt's legs shattered on impact and the video-Sonja's ministrations seemed almost merciful. Two hours after that they threw the wino in.
Claude hadn't expected a human sacrifice. He'd imagined they would continue to work their way through the domestic animal kingdom, hurling innocent sheep, goats, and pigs to their deaths, one after another. He glanced at Sonja Blue as she watched herself murder a man, courtesy of the miracle of videotape.
The wino lay sprawled on the floor of the racquetball court, his legs hopelessly smashed. He looked like every other street person over the age of thirty, with a tangled beard, crooked teeth, and an unwashed face rendered featureless by hardship.
He struggled to raise himself on one elbow. The video-Sonja jumped him like a hungry spider. It was a fierce, bloody transaction, but Claude could not look away. He felt the same uneasy thrill of guilt, excitement, and disgust that had overtaken him when he'd witnessed his first sex act in the Goddards' garage. After the wino's thrashing faded into twitching, the video-Sonja rocked back on her heels and laughed. The camera shut off, leaving the room awash in the hiss of blank tape.
"You aren't my daughter." Thorne's voice was that of a man suffering a deep wound without anesthetic. "You're some kind of freak, an aberration of God and nature. You might have her memories, but you aren't her. You can't be her. I won't let you be her."
Sonja Blue said nothing. She stared at the blank television screen, her back to Thorne.
"What do you want from me? Money? Do you want money to go away?"
She shook her head and turned to face him. "No, Mr. Thorne, I don't want your money. I want protection for Mr. Hagerty." She gestured to Claude. "He was my keeper while I was incarcerated. Wheele ordered his death under the mistaken belief that he was working for you. As you can see, they almost succeeded. Mr. Hagerty is an innocent bystander and I do not wish to see him harmed."
Thorne glanced at Claude. "What do you expect me to do about it?"
"Tell Wheele to back off or you'll ruin her."
Thorne made a snorting noise.
"You're very good at bluffing, Mr. Thorne. Just pretend she's attempting a takeover. Even if you don't pull it off, it'll give me time to make sure he gets out of town safely."
"What are you going to do?"
Sonja hesitated, uncertain as to whether she could trust him. "Whatever I do—believe me—I'll keep Mrs. Thorne's name out of it."
"Jake? What's going on down here?"
Shirley Thorne stood in the threshold, one hand on the doorknob, the other touching the doorframe. She blinked at the strangers standing in her husband's office.
"Shirley, go back to bed. It's nothing." Thorne was trying to sound casual, but his face was that of a man trapped in his worst recurring nightmare.
"What are these people doing here at this time of night?"
"Please, dear, just go back to bed. It's nothing that concerns you."
Sonja stepped back, trying to pull the shadows around herself. The movement attracted Mrs. Thorne's attention. She peered at the girl dressed in denim and black leather, her eyes hazed by tranquilizers. Claude could feel the dread radiating from both father and daughter.
This was the stuff Claude's mother, bless her, had lived for, whether in the form of trashy novels, sudsy afternoon TV shows, or tearjerker movies. Claude bit back a hysterical giggle. He was trapped in an episode of The Edge of Tomorrow, directed by Wes Craven.
Mrs. Thorne gave a strangled cry of recognition and rushed to embrace her daughter. She buried her face in Sonja's shoulder, her tears rolling off the leather jacket. Sonja's arms moved to encircle the old woman but halted before they actually touched her shoulders. Claude could see the effort it took to keep from returning her mother's hug.
Claude was painfully aware of Denise's presence permeating the room, like the moan of a tuning fork resonating inside the ear.
"You've come back. Praise the Lord! You've come back to me. Just like she said you would! You've come back. Everyone told me to give up, that you were dead, lost to me, but I never believed them. Never. Never. I knew you weren't dead! I would have felt it if you were really gone. You were always there… always."
It was hard, so very hard to deny her. Sonja felt something breaking inside. Her heart was full of shards. She was afraid to speak, afraid that her voice would be replaced by the sound of breaking glass. But she had to speak. There was no way back into the bosom of her family. She'd known that the day she killed Joe Lent. But there had always been the faint hope that she would be forgiven her trespasses and accepted by her family. Now it was time to pull the fantasy out by its roots.
She ached to fall into her mother's arms and weep for the years lost to her, but that was impossible. She knew what she had to do, even though it pained her more than Thorne's denial.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken, Mrs. Thorne."
Shirley Thorne looked into Sonja Blue's eyes, perplexed by the twin reflections of her own face. It was easy to slip into her mind, even though Sonja was repulsed by this most intimate of intrusions.
Sonja dropped through the layers of Shirley Thorne's consciousness, shocked by the other woman's proximity to true insanity. Her mind was an unlanced boil, filled with years of accumulated grief and anguish. At the core of the infection was a human figure.
The nucleus of Shirley Thorne's malaise was Denise. A Denise with features wiped clean of human imperfection or vice. An umbilical cord, as thick and black as a snake, emerged from Denise's belly, fastening her to Mrs. Thorne's unconscious. The Denise of Shirley Thorne's obsession smiled beatifically, glowing like an Orthodox saint, untouched by the corruption it generated.
Left unattended, she would retreat deeper and deeper into her self-inflicted wound, content to spend the rest of her days in the company of her canonized ghost-child.
Saint Denise stared at the intruder in her realm with the passive eyes of a caged doe. There was no sentience in their depths. Wherever Denise Thorne went when she surrendered her flesh to Sonja Blue, she wasn't gestating in her mother's head. The ghost Denise was a parasite, a cherished memory turned malignant.
Shirley Thorne had spent two decades denying herself the catharsis of mourning the loss of her only child. She'd refused her husband's solution, preferring to
embrace hope. But unrewarded faith can curdle, and in time her optimism gave way to desperation and, finally, delusion.
Sonja knew what she had to do, but she was uncertain whether her actions would heal Denise's mother or drive her over the edge.
She was back in her own flesh. A second, perhaps two, of real time had elapsed. "Mrs. Thorne, I'm not your daughter. Your daughter's dead." Her words were quiet but firm, just like the push she gave her mother's mind.
She was inside the older woman's head, dressed in black leather and a surgeon's mask. In her hand gleamed a switch-scalpel. The malignant umbilical cord pulsed and writhed and the Denise tumor bobbed lazily like a balloon on the end of its string.
Was this murder? Suicide? Or was it closer to abortion? If so, the mother's life was at stake. There could be no hesitation this time. The scalpel sliced through the fake Denise's lifeline. A look of confusion crossed the clone's blank face as it began to dwindle.
Shirley Thorne stared at the strange woman with mirrors for eyes. She opened her mouth, prepared to deny her daughter's death, but something stopped her. There was a white-hot needle in her head. Something convulsed inside her brain and she thought she heard Denise's voice crying out to her, "Mommmmmeeeee."
For the first time since 1969, she knew her child was dead. With that realization came a rush of relief and an overpowering sense of loss. The emotions clashed and raged inside her like powerful rivers, and she began to cry. The sobs racked her frail body, threatening to knock her to the floor. The girl with the mirror eyes reached out to steady her, but Mrs. Thorne shrank from her touch.
"Don't you touch her!" Thorne was angry and frightened. "Get away from her! You've done enough damage already." He hurried to his wife's side, placing himself between mother and child. Mrs. Thorne clutched his arm, her tears splashing on his hands.
"Jake, Jake, our baby's gone. She's dead, Jake. Denise is dead."
Thorne's sinus cavity ached with unshed tears, but he refused to weep in front of the thing that wore his daughter's skin. "Get put," he hissed. "Now!"
Sonja Blue left without looking back, her bruised companion in tow. If she had permitted herself one last look at Denise's parents, she would have seen Thorne reach for the phone.
Claude did not offer any words of sympathy. It was obvious Sonja did not want to talk. Not that he could blame her. He fell into his own private reverie.
He felt increasingly unreal and he wasn't certain if that disturbed him or not. For the better part of two decades his life had revolved around a pattern and, in time, the pattern had come to describe his life.
Due to his work, he'd found himself increasingly on the outside of normal existence. He worked when others slept and slept when most people were at work. He spent his waking hours either isolated or in the presence of lunatics. He had few friends and even fewer lovers. At the age of thirty-eight he could talk of leaving everything he owned and everyone he knew without real regret. There was nothing to tie him to the city except his job, and now he didn't even have that.
Funny, only three days ago he was just another slob, trapped in a dead-end job with nothing to his credit except a high-school diploma and a library card. Now he was privy to secrets theologians would kill for, conspiring and conspired against, and permitted the frankest of looks at the private lives of the rich and famous. It was enough to make his head spin. Or was that the cognac? He'd helped himself to a quick, appreciative swig from Thorne's stock. He doubted any of the principals at the family reunion had noticed or cared.
Maybe this was a dream, after all. The mixture of horror, melodrama, and insanity seemed appropriate to fantasy. But if it was a dream, it was a particularly vivid one. He could even smell the exhaust fumes, hot as dragon's breath, from the dark sedan that was headed toward them.
She'd been too preoccupied to see the danger until it was almost on her. She was thinking of Thorne and how he'd looked like a scared old man, when the dark sedan jumped the curb and headed right for her.
She planted her right hand on the hood of the car, vaulting onto its roof before she had time to realize what she'd done. Her landing was not smooth and she tumbled off the roof, bashing her left shoulder as she bounced off the trunk.
Where was Hagerty?
She got to her feet, scanning the pavement, fearful that his benign bulk might be wedged under the front wheels of the sedan. No, the orderly had leapt clear of the vehicle, although not as gracefully as she had. Hagerty sat half in the gutter, looking somewhat dazed. His nose was bleeding again. For some reason that scared her.
The doors on the sedan opened, disgorging look-alike young men outfitted in dark suits, ties, and sunglasses. Hagerty began to laugh. He didn't offer any resistance when two men thrust their guns in his face and pulled him toward the car.
Claude was flattered. All this fuss over an ex-jock gone to middle-aged flab and male-pattern baldness! Who'd a' thunk it?
"Stay away from him! Keep your hands to yourself!" The Wheelers paused in their abduction, their fear made obvious by their body language if not their faces. The Other wanted to break bones and rupture soft tissues. Sonja felt the familiar surge of adrenaline that signaled the loss of her self-control. She stepped toward the knot of faceless men; she could almost taste their blood on her lips.
The bullets punched holes in her abdomen, their hollow heads exploding on impact and sending shrapnel through her guts. She'd been hurt hundreds of times before, but not like this. Never like this. She collapsed facefirst on the street, her torso a mass of blood and exposed intestine. She caught the scent of ruptured bowel and it took her a moment to recognize the stink as being her own.
In all the previous woundings the pain had been sharp but brief. After all, what was pain but the animal flesh reacting out of instinct? But the agony she now felt was unrelenting and quadrupled with every breath, like sunlight reflected in a house of mirrors. Her spinal cord must have been damaged by one of the dum-dum fragments.
The spinal cord—that flexible cable of nerves and tissues—was the vampire's Achilles' heel. Once damaged it could never be regenerated—the same for the brain perched atop it in its box of bone. Sever a vampire's spinal cord and it died. Crash it and the creature was paralyzed and soon died of starvation. It was one of the few physical frailties they shared with their prey.
The car sped off, Claude in the backseat. She found some irony in the fact that she was sprawled in the gutter, exiting the world as she had first entered it, two decades past. It was as if the past twenty years had been the dream of a dying girl. She laughed, but all that came out of her mouth was a lungful of dark blood frothed with oxygen.
As she died, she began to hallucinate.
Or maybe not.
Ghilardi bent over her, his face pinched with concern. Sonja recognized him by his aura more than his physical appearance. He'd been dead for several years and his spirit was hardly the type to confine itself to the strictures of aged flesh. He shimmered bluish white, like the sky on a bright summer's day, and his blurred features were younger than those she'd known. But then, no one ever pictures themself as being old.
"Sonja?"
She'd expected his voice to be as ephemeral as his form, but it was the same as it'd ever been. There was no static on the line. He wasn't talking long-distance. That meant she was close. Closer than she'd ever been before, even in the London gutter.
"I've so much to tell you, Sonja! I was such a fool about so many things! The flesh deluded me, misled me. Everyone finds that out, once they're rid of it. Most do, that is. Some never surrender the illusions of the flesh and refuse to free themselves of its limitations. But I had it all wrong. The Aegrisomnia isn't a key to lost powers—I mean, it is a key, but not to the doors of human perception. It was written by a Pretender for Pretenders. It was intended for Pretender changelings who were ignorant of their birthright and thought they were humans—the ultimate pretense! I had some Pretender blood in me; not much, but enough to be sensitive to the Real World.
It was easier for me to claim my powers were inherent in all humans rather than to contemplate an ogre or an incubus in the family tree."
This was all very interesting, but Sonja could not see why her mentor had intruded on her last moments with such late news.
"There's so much to learn and forget once you're free of the business of living. But you can't die, Sonja, Not yet. Much depends on you."
Wheele? Was she that dangerous?
Ghilardi caught her thought and dismissed it. "Wheele is nothing. A fluke. The bastard product of a backwoods incubus. A Pretender unaware she is pretending and armed with more power than she knows what to do with. No, grander and far more horrible things await you."
"Death has made you oblique, old man," she whispered, but Ghilardi was gone. In his place was Chaz.
Unlike Ghilardi, who had problems regaining human form, Chaz's apparition was a perfect replica of his physical self, right down to the collar buttons. The only flaw in the illusion was that he happened to be composed of violet fog instead of flesh.
Chaz leaned forward, studying her with the detached interest he'd give an ant farm. A ghostly French-cut dangled from his lips, phantom smoke curling about and through his head. Chaz and the cigarette smoke shared the same consistency.
"Bummer, innit?" His lips pulled back into a mocking smile. "Spend six months in a loony bin and not three days out when—hey, presto!—yer lying in th' gutter with yer guts in yer hands. Yeah, yer knackered awright. But don't worry about bein' alone, pet. Me an' Joe—you do remember Joe, dontcha? sure y'do!—me an' him's waitin' for you, luv. We want t' show you a good time, eh? Joe's been waitin' longer'n me, so he's got seniority. Kinda like a shop steward. But I can wait. I got time, right, luv?" He reached out with insubstantial fingers to caress her. Moth wings brushed against her bloodied cheek.
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