Sunglasses After Dark (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  I stumbled backward in disgust. My guts heaved, angering the bruises that covered my abdomen. I hobbled as fast as I could to the loo. My brain was starting to wake up; what if whoever killed Joe was still in the flat? Joe had a lot of enemies. That was his way. But no one hated him enough to do that kind of job on him.

  I tried to make it to the toilet but got as far as the sink before I threw up. God, how it hurt. It felt like I’d been kicked in the gut by a mule. I clung desperately to the washbasin as my knees began to buckle. I forced myself to stand, since I didn’t like the idea of fainting with a dead man in the other room. I opened my eyes and found myself staring into a sink full of blood I’d just vomited. But it wasn’t my blood.

  I began to shake. Sweat trickled down my back, feeling like a spider crawling down my spine. I was startled at how easy it was for me to identify the blood I’d puked as not being mine. Blood has its own identity, just like fingerprints, voiceprints. I knew it belonged to Joe because it tasted of him.

  Turns out I was right. Nobody hated Joe Lent enough to do such horrible things to him. Except me.

  I looked in the mirror and saw the blood smeared across my lips. I opened my mouth in dumb protest and saw, for the first time, my own fangs. They emerged from my gums hard and wet, stained with stolen blood. I cried out and pressed my hands over my mouth in an attempt to hide my shame.

  And, just like that, I remembered everything.

  I remembered who I was, where I’d come from, and how I ended up in London. I remembered Morgan’s dry farewell laugh as he tossed me from the car, and the weird writhing in my fingertips just before I went into hibernation. The memory caused me to stare down at my hands, fearful that they might turn into the claws of a monster at any moment. Suddenly, the whorls and lines on my fingers and palms seemed to melt, to be replaced by new ridges and patterns, which, in turn, were swallowed by yet another set. No wonder Scotland Yard never found me.

  As my flesh halted its dance, I looked up and glimpsed a demonic face lurking in the mirror, watching me with blood-filled eyes. I tried to scream but all that came out was a choking sound.

  I was looking at myself.

  Chapter Ten

  I think I went insane after that, at least temporarily. At least the part of me that fancied itself human went on vacation, anyway. My memories of that time are fuzzy, as if I were drunk. When I finally came back to ‘myself’, I was on a small boat owned by an Irish fisherman sympathetic to the IRA. I told him I was in trouble because I’d killed an English soldier. That was good enough for him. Money to pay the ferryman was no problem. Joe Lent taught me well, after all, and now I no longer had to share the wealth.

  I entered France through Calais and from there made my way to Paris, where I spent a few weeks trawling the narrow streets and open-air cafes of the Pigalle, earning my keep and learning the language. I also discovered what Joe Lent had referred to as ‘the Etonian vice’ was not limited to England.

  I was pursued more than once by prospective ‘protectors’, but always managed to escape. I lived in mortal terror of losing control again and killing someone. The beatings my clients paid for . . . Well, that was different.

  I also feared remembering. I did my best to live in the present and limit the future to my next meal. However, my unique condition, now awakened, could not be ignored.

  My eyes, already sensitive to strong light, increasingly required protection. I dealt with situation by affecting sunglasses. However, the Hunger was a far more serious problem. I pictured the Hunger as a balloon where my belly should be; when the balloon was full, I functioned normally and felt good enough to fool myself into thinking I was human. But when the balloon was empty, the Hunger, threatened to destroy me from the inside out, filling my lungs with cold lead and my gut with bamboo splinters. Compared to what I’ve endured in years since then, the early stage of my addiction was a cakewalk.

  One of the decided benefits of being stricken with vampirism on the Continent was that I had an easier time buying live rabbits from the farmers’ markets in order to assuage the Hunger. I did not keep them long, and drained them as humanely as I knew how. The salty hotness of blood as it filled my mouth was appallingly delicious. A warm, pleasant feeling replaced the pain as I drank. But it was never really enough. Deep down, I knew I needed something more than the blood of animals.

  I left France within two months of arriving. I was afraid of being picked up by Interpol. I did not fear being punished for Joe Lent’s death. Instead, I was fearful I might get scooped up in a vice bust, and that somehow Denise’s parents would discover the truth of what had become of their daughter. Better they should believe her dead.

  For the next month or so I drifted from city to city, using stolen passports to cross the borders as I headed further and further North. Finally, I got tired of fighting off pimps and signed up with a Norwegian brothel that catered to the North Sea oil platforms.

  Bordellos servicing wildcatter rigs aren’t posh joints; they more resemble frontier cathouses than anything else. The launches came in with the men from the rigs on a regular basis. The usual crowd consisted of Swedes, Norwegians, Brits, and the occasional American, but they were all the same by the time they made it to our place— roaring drunk and ready to fuck. There were always twice as many tricks as girls and at least one john who didn’t want to wait his turn. Brawls over girls were pretty common.

  The madam was an aged Frenchwoman named Foucault. She liked to brag about how she’d ‘seen service on all fronts’ during the Second World War. Maybe even the First one, too. She knew the business better than any wife knows her husband and kept a bouncer on hand for when things got out of control—which was almost every night.

  The Woden was a rig so isolated its crew could manage shore leave only once or twice a year and its men came in loud and rowdy, bragging about their dicks and their staying power. It looked like just another work shift.

  Madame Foucault greeted the men from the Woden at the door and ordered a round of drinks on the house. She explained that since there were over twenty men in their party and only twelve girls working the house, there would be a slight delay in attending to their needs, but she promised that everyone would be taken care of. She then ordered the girls to come out and model for the customers. We did as we were told, strolling out in our work lingerie, most of which was starting to show signs of wear and tear; the feather boas were in sore need of some dry cleaning, most of the fishnet stockings sported a badly patched ladder or two, and a couple of the Frederick’s of Hollywood outfits fit a bit too snugly.

  Of course, the men of the Woden didn’t give a damn. We could have walked out there dressed in nothing but Hawaiian shirts and oven mitts and gotten the same reaction. They argued among themselves in two or three languages as to who’d get what girl and which one would go first.

  One of them swaggered over to me and began to feel my tits. He reeked of peppermint schnapps.

  “Get your hand s off. That one’s mine,” one of his co-workers slurred in Swedish. “Wait your turn.”

  “Hell I will,” retorted the man squeezing my tits as he fumbled with my bra straps.

  I looked past the man attempting to undress me at the Swede, who stood there, clenching his fists. The man who smelled like schnapps was built like a linebacker and it was clear he was used to being deferred to.

  I could tell the Swede wanted to attack the big man, but was afraid of being humiliated in front of the others. Waves of hate emanated from him. It felt as if I were standing in front of a heat lamp. I started to get excited, and the big drunk thought I was responding to his pawing.

  “See? She likes a real man,” he jeered.

  The Swede’s rage was exquisite. He stared directly at me and I felt a brief connection between us, like the spark that detonates a keg of dynamite. He wanted to see the big man’s blood. So did I.

  The smaller man’s face reddened and seemed to swell, as if trying to contain an internal explosion. His eyes gla
zed and he began to tremble. One of his companions touched his arm, which seemed to trigger something in him. With a bull-like bellow the Swede lunged at the bigger man, who was taken by surprise, stunned by the ferocity of the attack. The Swede slammed a fist into his tormentor’s kidney. The big man’s jaw dropped in a muted scream of pain. I stood, motionless, and watched the two of them writhe on the floor at my feet. The rage pouring from the Swede was of tsunami proportions.

  He was astride the big man, delivering vicious punches to his face and head. A couple of the other workers from the rig grabbed the Swede and pulled away. The Swede swore and struggled violently. They tried to calm him down, but he kept kicking and clawing, his curses degenerating into a wordless shrieking.

  The bouncer emerged from the backroom and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the two men restraining the Swede were responsible for the fight, so he grabbed one of them.

  The Swede jumped and landed on the back of the big man, who was on his hands and knees, staring uncomprehendingly at the blood from his nose puddling on the sawdust-strewn floor. The Swede whipped off his belt and used it to throttle the bigger man from behind. The big man, his back broken, was helpless to shake off his attacker. His face purpled and his eyes bulged from their sockets like deviled eggs.

  By this time the men from the Woden were either trying to pry the Swede off his victim or fighting the bouncer. The girls fled to the safety of their rooms. I, however, didn’t move a muscle. I was too busy basking in the Swede’s homicidal frenzy. Furniture was trashed. Bottles were smashed. All I could hear were men swearing and women screaming. The smell of blood was sharp and brassy. I felt wonderful.

  After a couple of minutes, the Swede finally succeeded in killing his foe. However, this obvious did not appease his bloodlust. Instead, he grabbed a chair and renewed his attack on the corpse, screaming and laughing at the same time. His mouth was fixed in a rictus grin and tears streamed down his face as he battered the dead man’s body.

  There was a loud explosion and something warm splashed my face.

  The Swede let go of the chair. He stood for a second, staring at the hole in his middle and the loops of shiny pink intestine dangling around his knees, before falling to the ground.

  Suddenly the hate was gone, as if someone had thrown a switch, allowing me to regain the ability to move and think. I looked down at myself and saw I was covered in the Swede’s blood. I had to fight to keep from licking my hands. When I looked back up I saw Madame Foucault holding a smoking shotgun, her face unreadable.

  The fight was over as quickly as it’d begun. Everyone gathered around and stared down at the dead men. Madame Foucault finally spoke. “He went crazy. That’s all there is to it.” Still, I could feel her looking at me as I stared at the blood congealing on the floor. I left the next day.

  I eventually came to realize there was more to being a vampire than simply drinking blood. It had been over three years since my birth in the backseat of Sir Morgan’s Rolls, but I had yet to make a real attempt to explore my dark heritage.

  I decided it was time to understand my powers and their corresponding weaknesses. My knowledge of vampirism was incomplete; it was shaped by popular fiction, old superstitions, and other faulty attempts to mythologize a reality imperfectly perceived. I was trying to divine my true nature in a funhouse mirror.

  According to folklore, vampires have their own set of rules, just like cricket or Monopoly: they drink blood and only came out at night; they can’t stand daylight or the sight of crosses; they’re repelled by garlic and holy water has the same effect on them as battery acid; they can only be killed by a stake through the heart; they cannot enter a church; they never age; they turn into bats and wolves; they have hypnotic powers and sleep in coffins during the day.

  I was confused by these rules and fearful of testing their validity. Some things, however, didn’t need much in the way of proving. I already knew I didn’t like going out in direct daylight as it made my skin itch and gave me headaches that threatened to separate the lobes of my brain. However, I did not burst into flame or crumble to dust the moment I set foot outside. As long as I wore heavy clothing and sunglasses, I could function with only a minimum of discomfort.

  As for garlic, its only noticeable effect on me was bad breath.

  While I did not experience revulsion or pain in the presence of crucifixes, visions of Christopher Lee, the flesh on his stigmatized forehead bubbling like molten cheese, kept me from touching one. As for the stake through the heart bit, I didn’t consider it a feasible test.

  As for aging, I still seemed to be growing older, although at a far reduced rate. Plus, my years of hard living did not show in the least. There were girls in the business years younger than myself who could have easily passed for my older sisters. I also discovered that my stamina was incredible: I was rarely sick and I healed quickly, if not instantly. With each passing year I seemed to be growing stronger and stronger. I had nothing to fear from even the most brutal john.

  One night I ventured into a church. I was not seized by epileptic fits the moment I crossed the threshold. I approached the altar, half-expecting to be struck by lightning at any moment. Old women, their heads covered with babushkas and dressed in widows’ weeds, knelt at the prayer rail. A priest dressed in a long, flowing cassock moved about in the shadows, tending the votive candles flickering at the feet of wooden saints.

  The baptismal font was built into the altar rail. Its lid pivoted when touched to expose a shallow silver basin. I stared at the holy water for a long moment. I had originally intended to immerse my hand, but my resolve faltered at the possibility of my flesh being stripped to the bone. I noticed the priest, who had stopped in front of the statue of St. Sebastian, was watching me.

  I hurried from the church, the holy water untested.

  I wasn’t too sure about the whole turning-into-a-bat business. Did I need a magic potion or a special incantation to trigger the metamorphosis? And if I did succeed in becoming a bat, how would I reverse the transformation? Cinema vampires changed by lifting their capes and flapping their arms, but that was too damn silly. Perhaps if I concentrated real hard...

  My body felt as if it was covered with ants. I cried out and leapt to my feet, swatting my arms and legs. I was afraid to look in the mirror in my room, but I knew my flesh was dancing again. I rode out the skin tremors, and when they’d finished, I was still human. At least physically.

  The hypnotic powers I’d experienced firsthand, although none of the legends I’d ever heard mentioned vampires drawing sustenance from the emotions of others. Nor did they mention telepathy. ,

  At first it was a mental variant of white noise; thousands of different voices merged into a backwash of unintelligible gibberish. Occasionally a snatch of coherent thought would bob to the surface, but nothing more. I thought I was going mad. Then I realized the voices in my head weren’t telling me to kill small children or derail streetcars; instead, they seemed preoccupied about what to have for dinner and who stood a chance of winning the football pools. The only time I had problems was when I got too close to drunkards, madmen, or the truly evil. Their thoughts came through all too clear.

  By spring of 19741 was in Switzerland, employed in a house operated by a certain Frau Zobel. Brothel-keeping was something of a family tradition for her, stretching back to the Napoleonic era. While the madame did not pretend to like me, she realized the financial benefits of having an employee specializing in ‘fancy passions.’

  I enjoyed working for Frau Zobel, as she ran a first-class house, discreetly located in a respectable Zurich neighborhood. The girls were clean and the clientele genteel. It was light-years removed from my apprenticeship under Joe Lent and my time with Madame Foucault. But despite her grand airs and left-handed pedigree—she claimed to be the illegitimate granddaughter of Napoleon III—Frau Zobel was made from the exact same stuff as old Foucault: ten-penny nails and boot leather.

  I had no friends among the girls in he
r stable. But that was nothing new. I made it a practice to never get friendly with anyone, for fear of being discovered. Not that I had to actively discourage anyone from making overtures. Most women dislike me on sight. Men, on the other hand, react in one of two ways: either they are uneasy while in my presence, or they want to involve me in a minor sex crime.

  While I didn’t mind being tied up with clothesline or beaten with a bundle of birch twigs, I rarely played the submissive role. I attracted those who wanted to be dominated and degraded, and I assumed the mantle of dominatrix without complaint. It wasn’t a one-way relationship, as I experienced a diluted version of the pleasure I’d received from the Swede’s berserker rage during these sessions. I thought I was keeping the part of me that killed Joe Lent in check. Little did I know I was actually nursing it.

  One of my regular clients was Herr Wallach, a pudgy little man in his late fifties whose particular fancy passion involved a block-and-tackle and ice water enemas. Herr Wallach was a tenured mathematical theoretician. He also belonged to an esoteric fellowship composed of thinkers, artists, and poets known as the Akademy. Every year the group held a party at the home of one of its members. The host for that year’s party was Herr Esel, a professor of metaphysics. Wallach wanted me to be his guest.

  The prospect of attending what sounded like a dreadfully dull evening in the company of Herr Wallach was far from appealing. Then he showed me the evening gown he’d bought for the occasion. It was a strapless dress made of black velvet, stunning in its simplicity, complete with matching opera gloves. Wallach told me I could keep the ensemble if I agreed to attend the party.