Paint It Black (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  Sonja found Renfields, in and of themselves, pathetic and loathsome creatures. The vast majority of them were sensitives, of one stripe or another: telepaths, clairvoyants, dowsers, and the like. The two characteristics they all shared was a morbid appetite for their own destruction and a love of the undead that bordered on addiction. Nearly every Renfield she had ever met was heavily dependent on his or her master, who usually provided them with whatever they craved, be it drugs, sex, pain, or merely the ability to control the psychic powers that made life among ordinary humans impossible for them.

  Although Renfields definitely played their part in Noble society, Sonja had always wondered why such powerful vampires would lumber themselves with such deeply unstable servants. But now, watching Pangloss’ retinue flutter about their dying master like moths around a fading light, she finally began to understand. Vampires spend their existence doing nothing but taking from others, and by their nature are needful things. But with their Renfields, they could experience, in a twisted fashion, what it was like to be genuinely needed.

  “Please, master, I beg you to rethink what you are about to do,” whispered one of the Renfields. He was in his late forties, with wide streaks of gray at his temple, and spoke with a European accent.

  “There’s no putting it off, Gustav,” Pangloss replied, levering himself out of his wheelchair. “It’s too far along for me to change back, even if I could.” He took a feeble step forward, and Sonja grabbed his elbow to steady him.

  “But, master, what of us?” Gustav asked. “What will become of us once you are gone?”

  “You can either make your own way in the world, or offer yourself to another Noble, such as Baron Luxor or the Marquis Caixão. The choice is yours,” Pangloss sighed. “Come, Sonja. It is time for us to go.”

  According to Pangloss, there were several necropoleis scattered throughout the great cities of the world, as well as some lost to human memory. All were held as sacred ground to the Pretending Races, no matter their breed. One such burial ground was located in Manhattan, accessible through tunnels interconnected to the old subway system.

  “There is an access point in the sub-basement of this apartment building,” the dying vampire explained. “That is why I chose this skyscraper as my final lair.”

  The sub-basement was only accessible via a second elevator from the penthouse, and proved to be dark and damp and smelled of rat piss. Sonja helped support Pangloss as they wound their way through stacks of moldering newspapers and collections of steamer trunks dating from the Belle Époque. In the farthest corner of the sub-basement was a narrow, low-set door made of iron, with strange runes chiseled into the lintel, written in the brain-twisting Pretender script. Pangloss produced a key from the pocket of his robe and handed it to her. Sonja fitted the key into the door and gave it a turn. It swung open with a squeal, displacing enough cobwebs to rig a schooner. There was a smell of old earth and stale water and, in the distance, could be heard the rumble of subway cars.

  The tunnel that connected the sub-basement to the city’s underground labyrinth of service tunnels and subway tracks was indeed old, shored with rotting timbers and lined with mammoth slabs of natural stone. The walls abruptly shuddered, and a fine rain of dirt and loose mortar settled onto their heads. By Sonja’s reckoning, they were somewhere under the Number Six line.

  Pangloss pointed at a set of stone steps that lead upward, worn from the tread of countless feet. The staircase was so narrow, and steep Sonja had to place Pangloss ahead of her while she walked behind him, her hands bracing his back and hips in case he lost his balance. It was a slow, torturous climb, but finally they came to another iron door. Pangloss unlocked it as well, and they emerged from what otherwise appeared to be a maintenance closet into the lobby of Grand Central Terminal.

  Pangloss shuffled across the main concourse, leaning on Sonja for support. In the short time since they had left his lair, she could see that he had aged even further. His back was now completely bowed, his head dropped between his shoulders like a turtle’s. Sonja was worried that they might attract notice from one of the employees, or that some well-meaning Good Samaritan might insist on getting a courtesy wheelchair for such an obviously infirm senior citizen. Then she realized that although people were looking right at her and Pangloss, no one seemed to be seeing them. And it wasn’t the usual indifference New Yorkers showed their fellow commuter, either. Without her being aware of it, Pangloss had cast them both in shadow, enabling them to walk among humanity without being seen. Although the old vampire’s body might be decaying, it seemed his psychic abilities were as strong as ever, if not stronger.

  As they made their way onto one of the lower platforms, Pangloss abruptly teetered and collapsed onto one knee. As Sonja helped him back onto his feet, she could tell his left kneecap had dissolved.

  “I wanted to go to my death on my own two feet, but I fear I left it too late,” he rasped. “I’m afraid…you’ll have to carry me…from here on in.”

  Sonja scooped the aged vampires into her arms, and was surprised to find he weighed no more than a bag of dead leaves. She was afraid to tighten her grip on him, for fear he would crumble in her hands like chalk.

  Pangloss motioned to the end of the platform. Sonja nodded her understanding, and quickly stepped off the platform onto the tracks below. The tunnel was lit by sodium-light fixtures set into the brakeman alcoves every twenty-five feet. The vaulted brick roof was black from decades of grime, and graffiti smeared the walls.

  There was a sudden rumbling from behind them, and Sonja quickly side-stepped into one of the alcoves just before an Amtrak train hurtled by. As she watched the lighted windows flash past, she glimpsed an old woman gaping at her for a quarter of a heartbeat before the train was once more swallowed by the darkness.

  A half-mile down the tunnel they came to what looked like a service tunnel, the floor of which was littered with spent rubbers, broken syringes and smashed bottles. Pangloss reached out with a trembling hand and pressed one of the bricks. There was the sound of stone grating on stone, and then the side of the wall opened.

  “Hurry,” he whispered. “No human must see the entrance - and live to tell of it.”

  Sonja slipped through the opening and the door pivoted back into place. They were standing at the head of yet another set of ancient stone stairs corkscrewing into the earth. There was no light in the antechamber but Sonja’s dark-adapted eyes could see perfectly well in the inky blackness as they descended the stairs.

  Pangloss plucked at his robe with long, yellowed talons, his voice as fragile as a cobweb. “Did I ever tell you how much I loved him?”

  “Who?”

  “Morgan.”

  Sonja tensed at the mention of his name, the muscles in her arms going rigid. “I believe you mentioned it, the last time we met.”

  “I loved him so very, very much—more than any of the others. I’d had scores of lovers before him, and hundreds since, but he was the only one I viewed as an equal. The only one I loved enough to Make in my image, so we could be together forever. But he betrayed me, in the end. He left me to go off on his own. He said I was not an ambitious enough partner for his tastes. He planned great things for himself, and dreamed that he might step from the shadows and rule the world of man.” Pangloss giggled, his body shivering with the effort. “Well, we know where his ‘great plans’ got him, don’t we, my dear? That is what he gets for trying to use science to meet his ends! Science is a human thing. Whenever our kind tries to use it, it turns in our hands, like an angry serpent. We are things outside nature, beyond reason—perhaps it senses we are not its true master.”

  “Science isn’t a force unto itself, like the weather or magic,” Sonja explained. “It’s just... well, it’s just science.”

  “That is what you think, but you are wrong.” Pangloss’ voice had taken on the vague, querulous tone of the senile. “Did I tell you I loved him? Loved him better than any of the rest?”

  “Yes, I believe
you did,” Sonja said patiently.

  “I hated him for a long, long time— longer than I loved him, actually. I hated him for at least five centuries. I’ve never hated anything or anyone for that long before. But I forgive him for leaving me and betraying me. It is easier to forgive than hate. It does not use up quite as much energy. You should learn from that, child.”

  “I’m not the forgiving kind,” she replied.

  “Then why are you carrying me?” For a brief moment, Pangloss’ eyes were no longer cloudy but clear and sharp, only to just as quickly grow vague again. “Whatever happened to that Palmer fellow?” he asked, his voice having resumed its old man’s timbre. “Are you two still together?’”

  “No, we split up.”

  “That’s a shame,” he said wistfully. “You looked so nice together.”

  After what seemed like a small eternity of stairs, they reached a mammoth cavern, which contained a huge labyrinth carved from the living rock. This was Pangloss’ final destination. At the mouth of the necropolis was a huge gate, guarded by a pair of gigantic ogres, their flesh the same color as cave-born lizards.

  As they approached, the bigger of the two swiveled his wide, flat head in her direction, revealing twin lumps of jelly where his eyes should be.

  “Who go there?’ the blind ogre rumbled.

  “I am Doctor Pangloss. I have come here to die,” the old vampire replied.

  The ogre sniffed the air again and frowned. Although he might not have eyes, his hearing and sense of smell were very acute. “Who woman?”

  “She is Sonja Blue,” Pangloss answered. “She is my grandchild.”

  The ogre held a brief conference with his fellow guard—a mere stripling of seven feet—before unlocking the gate, swinging it open as easily as a screen door. “Welcome to the Necropolis of New York. Good journey, Doctor.”

  “Thank you, friend ogre,” Pangloss replied humbly.

  The interior of the labyrinth reminded Sonja of the catacombs of Rome, with its narrow stone corridors and burial niches carved into the walls. As to be expected, the spaces closest to the entrance were all occupied, so they were forced to travel deeper into the necropolis, past countless dead ogres, naga, kitsune and other less identifiable species of Pretender, in order to find a final resting place.

  As she carried him past one of the occupied loculi, Pangloss motioned for her to stop. The aged vampire studied the corpse of what had once been a woman, dressed in the rotting remains of Edwardian finery. Although her face resembled that of an unwrapped mummy, her long blonde hair, plaited into a six-foot-long braid that lay coiled atop her desiccated breasts like a hibernating serpent, possessed an eerie vitality.

  Pangloss stared at the dead vampire for a long moment before finally speaking. “The Lady Zavera. I would know her anywhere. I always wondered what had become of her. It never occurred to me that she could have succumbed to the Ennui.”

  “Was she a friend of yours?”

  “Nobles do not befriend one another—we make alliances,” he replied with a laugh that sounded like paper being crumbled. “In that regard, she was an occasional ally. Ah, well—at least I will not be among strangers.”

  After wandering several miles through the labyrinth, Sonja finally located an empty loculus. She carefully eased Pangloss into the narrow stone ledge, where he sighed and smiled as if he was resting on the softest mattress in the world.

  “This will do just fine,” he said.

  “Are you comfortable?” Sonja asked, shifting about uneasily.

  “Yes,” he replied. “But you do not seem to be.”

  “I’m not used to the idea of natural death,” she admitted. “It’s not something I have much experience with.”

  “Does it frighten you?” he asked, his voice increasingly faint.

  “Not really, I just feel…awkward, I guess,” she replied with a shrug of her shoulders. “What does dying feel like? Does it hurt?’

  “There is pain, of course. But I have known greater pain than this, and a thousand times over. No, what I feel is not physical. It comes from somewhere beyond the body. It is as if am both empty and yet so full, I am about to explode. After centuries of taking the life-force of others, I am finally full to the brim. That is the funny thing about all this. Even as my body wastes away, my psychic energies are stronger than they have ever been. It is as if I am feeding on myself, just as I once fed on others.” Without warning, Pangloss reached out and grabbed Sonja’s hand. “I’m afraid of what it will be like, Sonja,” he said, his voice trembling with both fear and sadness. “I know that humans seem to have all kinds of options in the After— but what about us? What happens when the dead die? What is there beyond unlife? Do we go to Hell? Or do we go nowhere at all?”

  “I don’t know, Pangloss,” she replied honestly.

  He tightened his grip on her hand and motioned for her to draw closer. “You have done me a great service, Sonja Blue. Far greater than I deserve. As payment for your kindness, I will tell you something of great value. He loves you as the moth loves the flame, as the mongoose adores the cobra. He…” The vampire’s voice began to tremble. “I’m so sorry, child. It was all for naught, wasn’t it? All the pain, all the death, all the intrigue—in the end, it meant nothing.” The old vampire reached up and touched his face, staring in confusion the wetness on his fingers. “What…what’s this?” he asked in surprise.

  “They’re tears,” Sonja whispered.

  “At last,” Pangloss smiled.

  As the ancient vampire closed his eyes for the last time, his body rapidly withered, like a deflating balloon. At the same time, a burst of energy shot forth from the loculus, putting every hair on Sonja’s head on end. She stumbled backward as what looked like a ball of St. Elmo’s fire bounced back and forth between the walls of the labyrinth like a demented handball before disappearing into the heart of the necropolis.

  After a lengthy trek retracing her steps through the subterranean labyrinth, Sonja finally found a stairway leading out of the necropolis, which lead to a hidden doorway in the Glen Span Arch, located in the North Woods, the least-trafficked sector of Central Park. Dawn was already turning the early morning sky a lighter shade of blue, and she felt as if she had just been pulled through a knothole.

  As she hurried through the park, she espied a homeless person rummaging through one of the garbage cans. He looked like every other homeless person on the streets of the city, dressed in mismatched, scavenged castoffs, with newspapers stuffed in his shoes. As she drew closer, the homeless man looked up from what he was doing and fixed her with pupil-less eyes the color of gold. It was yet another of the seraphim, going about its business—whatever that might be.

  Sonja paused and returned its stare. There was something familiar about this particular seraph, although she could not put her finger on exactly what. It couldn’t be its appearance as all seraphim were indistinguishable from one another. No, the familiarity existed on a far less tangible level than mere physical appearance. With a start, she abruptly realized whom the seraph reminded her of.

  Pangloss.

  She should have figured it out for herself when Morgan’s tampering with the vampire life cycle produced a baby seraph instead of an infant bloodsucker! Vampires who could no longer bring themselves to feed on the misery of the living evolve into seraphim. It all kind of balanced out, once she thought about it

  For what is an angel but a demon yet to fall?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She is here. Lords of the Outer Dark preserve me, she has finally arrived.

  I have it on good authority that she was prowling the Black Grotto the other night. It will not be long before she hunts me down. Once that happens, my years of rehearsal will be behind me, and I will be faced with the Real Thing. But am I truly ready? Do I dare cast aside my proxies and step inside the tiger’s cage? Or should I gather my things and flee to some place like Moscow or Papua New Guinea?

  Why do I even ask myself such a question?
Am I not Morgan, Lord of the Morning Star? In the past, I would no more ponder fleeing than I would walk unprotected in daylight. But that was before Sonja. Curse her, she did more than mark me—that alone was insult enough—but she made me fall in love.

  I have prided myself on loving no one and nothing in the seven hundred and fifty-three years I have existed. I have walked throughout my existence without fear of wounds, or capture, or slavery, for I have worn death as my armor. Nothing, living or otherwise, has ever moved my heart to anything but base lust. Love makes a fool even of the shrewdest player— witness how it tricked Pangloss into making me his equal. I merely tolerated the loathsome old pervert’s attentions so I would escape the gelder’s knife and singing castrati in the papal choir for the rest of my life. I have heard from reliable sources that the old fool is dead of Ennui, or close enough to it. Good.

  But now, I find myself gazing into the eyes of Medusa, and I find myself smitten. It is not fair that I have found love after all this time, for I do not want it and it will destroy me if I give it half a chance. Such indignity!

  —From the Journals of Sir Morgan

  Chinatown was proving a hard nut to crack, even for one such as Sonja. All such communities are fiercely cliquish, but none more so than New York’s. Low faan, be they Anglo, Black, or Hispanic, stuck out like sore thumbs in its overcrowded streets, and, unless they were tourists, viewed with suspicion. She could use her telepathic abilities only so far without calling undo attention to herself. Still, there were those who would always provide information—for a price.

  There was nothing to distinguish the front of the Yankee China Drugstore from any of the others on the block. Indeed, the windows of the herbal pharmacy were so dusty most passersby automatically assumed it was no longer in business.

  A little bell over the threshold rang as Sonja entered the shop, the interior of which was dark and dusty, with a pressed tin ceiling and light fixtures that dated from the early Twentieth century. A twenty-foot-long gilded screen of chrysanthemums and grinning lions blocked the view into the back of the store. A long wooden counter with glass windows displayed mass-produced ceramic Buddhas and even cheaper tea sets with poorly woven wicker handles. Everything for sale was coated with a fine patina of dust.