Paint It Black (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  “Lethe? Is that you?” Sonja gasped.

  Yes, I was Lethe.

  “What happened to you?”

  I embraced my destiny, just as you have done. We are agents of change, you and me. You are the sickle, I am the seed.

  “That still does not explain why you’re…you’re…”

  A crone? The old woman gave her a crooked smile. The world has but two constants: creation and destruction. It was such before the rise of Man, before the reign of the great lizards, and even the Unnamed Ones that came before them. Things are born, things prosper, and things die. There is a time for each. My time in this world was destined to be brief. Just as you are a living vampire, I am a living seraph. Neither of us was meant to exist, and yet here we are. We are being used, each in our own way, to reset scales that have long been out of balance.

  In the beginning, all humans possessed that which is called ‘sixth sense’. But over the millennia, thanks to the manipulation of the Pretending Ones who prey upon them, they have lost it. The Nobles and other creatures needed humans that were blind and deaf to the Real World, so they could exploit them to their own ends.

  But by closing Mankind’s third eye, the Pretending Ones threw the balance of things awry. Mankind metastasized, becoming far more dangerous than the Nobles dreamed. Humanity’s lack of awareness makes them oblivious to the damage they do as they waltz closer and closer to the brink of extinction.

  It is fitting that by tampering with a system already out of balance Morgan’s attempt to create a race of living monsters instead produced me. From the moment of my birth, as impossible as it was, I was destined to level the playing field between Pretenders and Mankind.

  The universe is both Positive and Negative. If there is too much of one, no matter which it is, then the center can no longer hold. You are the Destroyer, the one who prepares the way. I am the Creatrix—mother to the new flesh. I have mated with twenty-five men, all of whom possess a psychic ability of some sort, and from them I have delivered twenty-five sons who will live a healthy mortal span of years. Each son has either been left as a foundling or in exchange with a loving family for a dying child. Each son was born with psychic abilities, and all twenty-five, once grown to adulthood, will be highly attractive to those of the opposite sex. And, like the Greek gods, their seed will grow in even the rockiest soil.

  Should all twenty-five of my sons succeed in reproducing four times each, and their descendants do likewise, within ten generations there will be twenty-six million of them. By the thirteenth, there will be over one billion. By the fifteenth generation, homo sapiens—the thinking man— will be no more—and in his place there will be homo praescius—the aware man. No longer will the Pretending Kind be able to manipulate Mankind by hiding in plain sight. That is my gift to the world.’

  “As for you, you now know the truth behind the seraphim. You understand what they truly are, and why the Nobles fear them so. Just as vampires feed on the humans they grew out, so do seraphim feast on vampires, making us the ultimate predators. Just as you evolved from human into vampire, you are gradually becoming one of us.”

  “How long do I have before I join the choir?” Sonja asked.

  Not long, Lethe replied. A century or two, at best. That is, unless you wish to ascend now, of course. It would be very painful, but it can be done.

  “That’s okay, kiddo. I think I’ll tough it out for the time being, if it’s all the same to you. But if your destiny has been fulfilled, why did you come back here?”

  My body is deteriorating. Soon I shall be without physical form. Even as she spoke, the glow radiating from Lethe’s body began to dim. I returned here for the same reason you have: this was where I was happiest. I wanted to say goodbye to you both. But Daddy no longer remembers me. I just wanted someone to… read…me… Her voice grew abruptly faint as her radiance began to flicker like a failing neon sign and she sank down onto the corner of the bed.

  “To read you a story, before you go to sleep,” Sonja said as she picked up the copy of Good Night Moon that lay at her feet.

  Jen yawned and stretched behind the wheel of the Land Rover as Sonja climbed back inside the vehicle.

  “About bloody time! I thought you would never get back!”

  “I ran into some old friends.”

  “Anyone I might know, milady?”

  “No. And stop calling me ‘milady’. My name is Sonja.’

  Jen pointed to the mask she was holding in her hand. “What’s that?”

  Sonja glanced down at the empty eyes staring up at her, the lips parted as if in anticipation. She lifted it to her face. The world she perceived from inside it was limited and claustrophobic. She removed it and hurled it out the window. “It’s just something to hide behind and scare others with,” she replied.

  Jen turned the key in the ignition, and the engine roared to life. “Where to next?” he asked.

  Sonja shrugged and kicked back in the passenger seat, resting her feet on the dash. She reached inside her shirt and withdrew the pendant Morgan had given her, dangling between her fingers like a pendulum. “It’s a big world out there, Jen. Surprise me.”

  “As you wish, milady.”

  Epilogue

  “From fairyland she must have come

  Or else she is a mermaiden,’

  Some said she was a ghoul, and some

  A heathen goddess born again.

  —John Davidson, A Ballad of a Nun

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Sonja Blue Novels

  Chapter One

  The city was founded over two hundred and sixty years ago by those who fled the intolerance of their various homelands and sought to build afresh elsewhere. It sits at the head of an estuary, a stone’s throw from the huge bay that first welcomed those settlers who came to this strange new world. This proximity to water shaped its destiny, much as a growing child is shaped by its surrounding environment.

  From its earliest days the city’s fortunes were linked to those of sailing ships and those who ply the waves. By the time of the American Revolution it was a bustling seaport and shipyard, with wharves teeming with trade, legal and otherwise. The shipping companies that crowded the waterfront exported tobacco, flour, indigo, and fish to Europe, while accepting darker human cargo from the Gold Coast and beyond.

  In the years that followed, the city’s livelihood became even more tightly linked with the sea and the adjoining rivers that occasionally threatened to swallow it whole. In time steelworks and oil refineries arose to build the battleships and freighters of the steam era.

  Like all seaports, in the beginning it was a brash and roughshod town—but as the decades turned into centuries, the city matured and became more sophisticated in its pleasures, giving birth to opera houses, museums, coliseums, seminaries, and colleges. There were ups and downs—fires and floods, recessions and inflation—but the city always managed to recover, just as a human body recuperates from various fevers and ills.

  The humans who called the city their own grew and thrived, producing sports figures, surgeons, newspapermen, philosophers, statesmen, and poets. The wheels of progress, industry, and business moved in sync without grinding against one another’s gears. It was a city with a Past and a Future.

  But then along came the Present.

  Fifty years ago the denizens of the inner city began to abandon the brownstones and row houses of their ancestors for the roomier, greener environs of the outlying suburbs, until the only ones left were those too poor or disenfranchised to move. The ancient neighborhoods, once vibrant and alive, began to decline as the working class gave way to working poor.

  Forty years ago the wheels of progress and industry began to shift as the shipyards began to mechanize, as did the refineries and steel plants. Fewer and fewer jobs were open to the unskilled and uneducated. Thirty-five years ago the first OPEC embargo drove price of oil from two dollars a barrel to thirty-two. Americans, no longer able to afford to drive the lumbering g
as-guzzlers Detroit manufactured, turned to foreign imports. The demand for domestic steel dropped drastically. The wheels of progress, no longer safely lubricated, began to grind its gears very loudly, sending sparks in every direction. Dockworkers, shipbuilders, foundry and refinery employees were laid off in droves. Entire city blocks were abandoned and left to rot.

  Thirty years ago the federal government began cutting back on aid to the poor and disadvantaged, leaving the city to face its declining years bereft of services, neglected and abused. What had once been a robust industrial economy gave way to one based on services. College graduates flipped hamburgers and change sheets, while stockbrokers, investment bankers, and realtors drove their Beamers and Jaguars into the slums to score crack. Crime rates soared. Political corruption was everywhere. Gangs began to proliferate, and with their growth came turf-wars. At some point during the heated battles between Glock-toting gangbangers, the city was delivered a wound from which it never fully recovered. For cities are living things. They are born and grow, mature and age. Sometimes they even die. But a city, unlike things made of flesh and blood, will continue to function long after its dead. And those humans that labor busily within the carcass, like so many maggots, are often determined to continue the pretense of life for their own reasons.

  Which brings us to Deadtown.

  Most humans that dwell within the city are unaware that there is a sector deep within its heart that is a true No Man’s Land. It is not located on any street map. No patrol cars, ambulances, or fire trucks venture into this lost riverside neighborhood. Cries for help are often heard echoing from its dark alleys and twisting streets, they are seldom answered—and for good reason. For Deadtown is the rotting heart of a once-vital metropolis. And what better place for the children of the night to gather than in a city that is already one of the living dead?

  “Here ya go,” the patrol cop said, as he handed his new partner a grease-soaked bag full of fast-food. “Your first on-duty midnight gut bomb. Enjoy.”

  “Thanks,” the rookie said as he unwrapped his double-cheeseburger.

  “Better eat fast,” the veteran advised him, “before we get another call. I can’t tell ya how many times I’ve had to chuck a perfectly good lunch out the window in order to run down some perp.”

  As if on cue, the dispatch radio suddenly crackled to life. “One-Baker-Nine. 10-30 in progress at Divine Liquors, at Eastern and Grundy Avenue. Suspect is an African-American male in his early twenties, tall, with white shirt and dark pants. Armed and dangerous.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” the veteran snarled as he tossed his unfinished meal and soda out the window into the street.

  “10-30? That’s armed robbery, right?” the rookie, following his partner’s example.

  “Sure is, kid,” the older cop replied. “That’s just a few blocks away—if we get there in time, we stand a chance of catching the bastard.”

  Sirens wailing and lights flashing, the patrol car raced through the city streets. As they got within a block of the liquor store, they heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire and saw a man fitting the description of the robber dart out the door and run in the direction of the river.

  “Call it in, kid,” the veteran said, as he punched the gas pedal.

  “Dispatch, this is One-Baker-Nine. We have eyes on the 10-30 suspect and are in pursuit, headed east on Eastern Avenue. Shots fired at Divine Liquors.”

  “10-4, One-Baker-Nine. Emergency personnel in route.”

  The headlights of the patrol car illuminated the suspect, who was running like a track star half a block ahead. The armed robber glanced over his shoulder at the rapidly gaining police cruiser, then quickly split off from the main road, heading down a narrow alley lined with trash cans.

  “Hold on, kid—this might get a little hairy,” the older cop warned as he whipped the patrol car about and raced down the alleyway, sending plastic trash receptacles flying. A second later they emerged onto a smaller parallel street one block over.

  “I see him! There he is!” the rookie crowed, pointing east. “He’s still headed east!”

  The patrol car sped after the fleeing robber, sirens wailing like a fury in pursuit of a sinner, its flashing lights throwing garish blue shadows against the facades of the shabby rowhouses tenements that lined the street. Suddenly the hum of wheels against pavement was replaced by the noisy thumpity-thump of a cobblestoned street.

  “Holy shit!” the older cop yelped, slamming on the brakes so hard his partner nearly went flying into the windshield.

  “What the hell are you doing?” The rookie shouted in disbelief as the veteran threw the patrol car in reverse and began speeding backward as fast as possible.

  “I didn’t realize we were this close to The Street With No Name,” his partner replied, a look of genuine fear on his face. Once the patrol car was back on full pavement again, he spun it about and began heading back in the direction of the liquor store.

  “What are you talking about?” the rookie asked. “Why aren’t we going after him?”

  “Because I have a wife, two kids, and a house with a mortgage, who all need me alive and kicking, that’s why,” the veteran replied gruffly.

  “But he’s getting away!” The rookie protested as he watched the robber dwindle in the rearview mirror.

  “Forget it, kid,” his partner said sadly. “It’s Deadtown.”

  DeShawn stared in bafflement as the cop car that had been chasing after him a moment before came to a screeching halt and backed up as fast as it could go, before fishtailing around and speeding off in the opposite direction. Not that he was disappointed in their abrupt and inexplicable departure. His lungs were burning from the exertion of his escape, and his heart felt like it was about to leap out of his chest. If the cops hadn’t pulled an unexpected about-face, he would have surely run out of steam and ended up trying to shoot his way out, all for a lousy seventy-five dollars and a yard of lottery tickets. Still, he had to wonder what could have spurred the po-pos to give up like that.

  As he paused to catch his breath, DeShawn looked around at the neighborhood he found himself in. Although the run-down row-houses, trash-strewn sidewalks and derelict storefronts were not unusual scenery, he could not place the old cobblestone streets and gaslight streetlamps. He glanced about, hoping to find a street sign, but there were none to be found.

  As he walked further into the strange neighborhood, DeShawn was struck by the eerie quiet and emptiness of the surrounding streets. Despite the wailing of a police siren and the screeching of ties, not a single person had come to their window or front door to see what was going on. Just then he heard a rustling sound from a nearby alleyway, like someone kicking dry leaves, followed by a piteous mewling noise.

  DeShawn peered into the alley and saw a man laying face-down in a pile of garbage, struggling to drag himself toward the street. The man looked middle-aged and dressed in clothes that were far too nice for a neighborhood such as this. No doubt he’d come to score drugs or a cheap fuck, and ended up jacked for his troubles. As the Crawling Man lifted a hand in supplication, DeShawn spotted a flash of gold on his ring finger and what looked like a Rolex about his wrist. He quickly looked around to make the streets were still deserted and then pulled his gun from his waistband before stepping into the shadows.

  He knelt beside the Crawling Man and flipped him onto his back like a turtle. Despite his fancy clothes and expensive wristwatch, his victim looked like the worst kind of crackhead, with open sores pock-marking his sallow, gaunt face. The Crawling Man’s eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets, and seemed to gleam like dark jewels in the dim light from the street. DeShawn grabbed him by the right hand quickly stripped the Rolex from his wrist. As he paused to admire his new acquisition, the Crawling Man’s hands shot forth, as quick as cobras, and grabbed DeShawn by the arm. He tried to pull away, but his victim’s grip proved as strong as iron.

  “Let go of me, motherfucker!” DeShawn snarled, bringi
ng the butt of his gun down on his victim’s skull.

  The Crawling Man did not let go, but instead hissed like an angry cat, revealing a pair of very large, very white fangs, and yanked his attacker toward him. DeShawn screamed as the vampire wrapped its arms about him in an obscene parody of a lover’s embrace, and dragged him down into the garbage like a trapdoor spider.

  Chapter Two

  Sonja stepped out of the shadows and onto The Street With No Name. She studied the ancient brick buildings, rough cobblestones and nineteenth-century lampposts, nodding silently to herself. Although the “quaint” street fixtures might fool the unwary tourist, the piles of rotting garbage lumped in the alleyways and gaunt, ashen-faced derelicts lurching down the street were testament to the fact that the neighborhood did not boast any trendy bistros or hip boutiques. Still, for a portion of the city that did not technically exist, The Street With No Name was surprisingly busy. Though most of the storefronts were boarded up, a handful of bodegas seemed to serve a steady stream of customers. She paused in front of one of the windows, peering in at the wall of faded Froot Loops boxes and expired baby-food jars that had been erected against prying eyes. Whatever they sold inside, it certainly wasn’t groceries.

  Her attention was attracted by the stutter and flash of neon farther down the street. She moved toward it, keeping a cautious eye on the darkened mouth of the alley, where something mewled to itself and rustled like dry leaves.

  In the middle of the block were a couple of bars and a liquor store. One was a titty bar called Dance Macabre; its logo was a woman cradling a serpent with a flickering neon tongue. Directly across the street was a pool hall called Rackham’s. Both establishments had knots of young men dressed in gang colors hanging outside on the curb, glaring at one another across the cobblestone road.