In the Blood (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  “No, but I thought it’d look, you know, different somehow.”

  Sonja gazed at the building across the street from where they sat in the airport rental car. She didn’t want to admit it, but she’d been expecting something different, too. The pastel-colored single-family Mediterranean revival-style dwellings lining the curving street hardly looked like the kind of neighborhood to shelter a lord of the undead.

  In the gathering dusk healthy-looking men and women, outfitted in expensive jogging gear with iPhone buds shoved in their ears, shared the streets with people walking their dogs. It was hard to picture Morgan joining his neighbors at the corner grocery to pick up a six-pack of Calistoga Water and a package of squid-ink pasta.

  “Wait a minute! Someone’s coming out of the house. Is that him?”

  Sonja stared at the middle-aged man standing silhouetted on the front porch. He was dressed in a charcoal-colored suit, his hair graying at the temples, his eyes shaded by tinted aviator glasses. She closed her eyes and pictured him as she last saw him: a debonair, jet-setting English playboy bent on a wild weekend in Swinging London. His strong, Cary Grant-like features rippled, revealing glowing eyes and sharp fangs. She heard the sound of his laughter as he forced her to take his cold member into her mouth...

  She pulled herself free of the memory before she relived the agony and shame of being simultaneously penetrated by both penis and fang. She shivered, her breathing ragged.

  “Are you okay?” Palmer asked, staring at her with concern.

  Sonja opened her mouth to reply, but all she could do was shiver and gasp like a malaria victim. She wanted to leap out of the car and dash across the street so she could drive her silver switchblade through his heart before he could reach the Ferrari parked in the drive, but her legs and arms had suddenly become lead weights. All she could think of was the fact that she had spent decades looking for this creature, and now all she could do was sit there and stare at him.

  Morgan tugged on a pair of leather driving gloves and slid behind the wheel of his sports car. If he glanced in their direction, neither Sonja nor Palmer noticed it. The moment the Ferrari disappeared down the street, headed in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge, the lassitude that had gripped her abruptly loosened.

  “Sonja—answer me,” Palmer said, giving her a jostle to try and wake her from what appeared to be a trance. “What’s wrong?”

  “I was afraid something like that would happen,” she snarled angrily shaking her head to clear herself of the paralysis. “Morgan is my Maker. I was Made in his image, and therefore one of his brood. The second I saw him, all I could think of was killing him—and suddenly I couldn’t move!”

  “You mean you were hypnotized?”

  “No, it was more like my self-preservation instinct had been triggered. It was as if part of my brain considered killing Morgan the same as killing myself.”

  Palmer rolled his eyes in disgust. “Are you saying, after coming all this way, you can’t lift a finger against this guy?”

  “No!” Sonja snapped, her denial harsher and louder than it needed to be. She winced and fought to regain control of her temper. “It’s simply a matter of will. After all, that’s how Morgan broke free of Pangloss, all those centuries ago: he proved himself to have the stronger will.”

  “What about you? Are you up to the job?”

  “I’ll find that one out the hard way, when the time comes,” she replied as she opened the car door.

  “Where are you going?” Palmer asked. “We just saw your guy leave.”

  “Since we’re already here and know the monster of the house is out, I thought we’d pay a little visit,” she explained.

  Palmer sighed and pulled a leather wallet from his raincoat pocket. He flipped it open to display his collection of lock twirls.

  Sonja grinned. “I like a man who’s prepared.”

  It took only a few seconds for Palmer to open the front door. There was a sticker affixed to one of the windowpanes set in a fan near the top of the door: Warning! This house protected by Phlegethon Home Security Systems!

  “You think this place is actually hooked up to a genuine home alarm?” he asked.

  “I doubt it,” Sonja replied. “Morgan isn’t the type to appreciate police—or even rent-a-cops—showing up.”

  Palmer pushed open the door, wincing in anticipation of the high-pitched drone of a home security system. Silence. Sonja walked in ahead of him, moving cautiously into the vampire’s nest, her head swiveling like a radar dish. The living room was devoid of furniture, and to the left was an equally barren dining nook.

  “He’s not much on interior decorating, is he?” Palmer whispered.

  “This isn’t where he dwells. It’s merely a nest, kind of like a vampire equivalent of a place in the city,” Sonja explained. “It’s convenient for maintaining his identity, and can serve as a bolt-hole, if he needs one. Most Nobles have nests scattered all over the world, mostly in metropolitan areas, where neighbors wouldn’t consider an absentee owner unusual.”

  Palmer walked into the stark white kitchen and opened the door of the burnished chrome refrigerator. It was empty save for an open box of baking soda. “Jesus, this place gives me the creeps,” he muttered.

  Sonja sniffed the air. “Do you smell something?”

  “Yeah, I think one of the neighbors is having a barbecue,” he replied, his belly rumbling in response to the aroma of roasting meat.

  As they headed up the stairs to the second floor, the smell grew increasingly stronger. Sonja stopped in front of a closed bedroom door and then tried the knob. It was unlocked. Exchanging glances with Palmer, she opened the door and stepped inside, to be greeted by the odor of roast pork.

  The bedroom was dark, save for the illumination cast by a small color television set atop a plastic milk crate. Sitting opposite in an easy chair was a middle-aged man dressed in a rumpled suit. The man watching the TV slowly turned his head towards his uninvited guests.

  Palmer gasped aloud at the sight of the man’s lobster-red skin, as if he’d been boiled alive. The man did not stand up from his chair, but instead opened his blackened lips and let his mouth drop onto his chest as if the muscles in his jaw had been severed. Sonja instantly began to backpedal into the hallway.

  Palmer stared in horror as smoke began to leak from man’s ears and nostrils, like an old cartoon, who then coughed out a ball of flame, which flew across the room and struck the wall a foot from Palmer’s head. The heat was so intense he could smell the hair on that side of his head starting to crisp.

  Sonja grabbed him by the arm and jerked him out of the doorway and into the hall as the burning man got to his feet in preparation of vomiting another ball of fire. Palmer looked over his shoulder in time to see the burning man lumber into the hallway after them, moving as if unused to operating arms and legs. He also seemed to be sweating bullets, and then Palmer realized that he was actually dripping fat like a hot candle. The odor of frying meat was everywhere as the creature followed them down the stairs.

  “We’re leaving! Okay? We’re leaving!” Sonja shouted.

  The burning man halted its clumsy advance and stared in their direction with the opaque eyes of a baked fish. It was still staring as the slammed the door shut behind them.

  “I said I’m sorry, okay?” Sonja grunted as she watched Palmer apply Solarcaine to the first degree burn on the side of his face. “How was I to know he was using a fuckin’ pyrotic as a burglar alarm?”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this shit! I knew it!” Palmer exclaimed indignantly. “But do I listen to myself? No! So I end up nearly getting flash-fried by an escapee from a sideshow!” He winced as he daubed the last of the antibiotic cream onto his temple, which now throbbed in time to his pulse.

  “C’mon, it’s not that bad,” she chided. “You’ve taken worse hits.”

  “You could have gotten us killed!”

  “No, I could have gotten you killed,” she corrected.
“And for that I deserve the rebuke. I guess I was trying to prove I wasn’t scared of the bastard. I ended up being careless and stupid and you got hurt. That’s not something I want to happen.”

  “You and me both,” Palmer said acerbically.

  Palmer tried to find the strength stay mad at her. At first the pain and fear had been enough to keep his anger fueled, but now that the immediate danger was gone, it was starting to fade. He wanted to stay upset, because being angry at Sonja was a lot safer than liking her.

  “I have trouble reminding myself how frail humans are,” Sonja said as she sat, Indian style, on the bed. “I keep forgetting you can’t regenerate like I do.”

  “I’ve been called a lot of things in my time, but ‘frail’ wasn’t one of them,” Palmer said with a grudging smile. “I notice you keep saying ‘human’ like it’s a brand name. Don’t you still consider yourself to be like us? You’re not like Pangloss—there’s still something alive in you.”

  “You know, most vampires would consider being favorably compared to humans a gross insult,” she said with a laugh.

  “Are you? Insulted, that is?”

  She smiled again. “No, because I’m not an actual vampire.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, I’ve got all the traditional vampire signifiers: fangs, a taste for the ‘forbidden vintage,’ nocturnal habits, the powers of hypnosis and all that jazz. But I’m not a true vampire. I never died, you see. I’m a freak: a species of one.”

  Palmer blinked in surprise. He’d assumed Sonja’s shunning of the daylight was because she would burst into flames if she stepped outside while the sun was up. It hadn’t occurred to him that she slept all day because she’d been awake all night.

  “So you’re a living vampire?”

  “In a way, yes.” She tilted her head, studying him from behind those unreadable mirrored lenses. “Do you like me, Palmer?”

  His cheeks colored at the unexpected question and he suddenly became very interested in counting the tiles in the ceiling. “Well, uh, it’s just that I...

  “I understand,” she sighed and uncurled her legs in order to stand up. “I’ll leave you alone…”

  “Yes, I like you,” he replied, surprising himself with what he now realized was the truth. “How could I not? You’ve saved my life more times in the last few days than anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “But if wasn’t on account of me, you wouldn’t be wrapped up in this mess. You’d be—”

  “Stuck in the State Pen, getting my teeth knocked out and my asshole stretched, with no hope of parole,” he pointed out. “Believe me, as weird and as dangerous as this shit is, I could be a lot worse off right now.”

  He walked over to where she stood and put his thumb under her chin, tilting it up so that she was looking into his face. He didn’t know why he did it; it just seemed like the thing to do—just like it seemed natural to pull her into his arms. He felt himself growing hard and that, too, seemed like a good thing. After all, it had been months since he’d last had sex…

  He tried to shut the thought of Lola her from his mind, but it wouldn’t go away. He remembered how everything had seemed right and natural then, too, like some kind of beautiful, happy accident. He used to think he was too cynical to fall in love. But, as it turned out, at the heart of every cynic is a naïve romantic. And Lola played him for the fool every step of the way, manipulating him like a puppet on a string until he was no longer his own man. It had been a trap from the beginning, baited with honey and hot meat. And he’d never suspected a thing until he’d faced the butcher on the killing floor.

  He pushed Sonja away, staring at her with horror-stricken eyes. “You’re doing this! You’re making this happen, not me!”

  Sonja’s face abruptly crumpled, and for a heartbeat it looked as if she might cry. Then her features grew harden and the corner of her mouth curled into a humorless sneer.

  “You fuckin’ idiot!” She snarled, her voice sounding as if her lungs were full of ice and razor blades. “You don’t even know what you really want, do you? You think you’re being made to do this? Okay, I’ll make you!”

  Palmer cried out as her will poured into him, seizing his brain in an invisible fist, only to have it choke off into a groan. His whole body felt numb, as if he’d been given a massive dose of Novocain. Although he was not in any discomfort, the total lack of sensation was worse than any actual pain.

  “Are you scared stiff yet?” she leered. “No? Then I’ll have to see about that.”

  Palmer was vaguely aware of his penis moving, but it felt like it was a hundred miles away. The numbness began to withdraw, to be replaced by excruciating pain. He gasped and struggled to keep his eyes from bugging out of their orbits as his member began to swell like an overinflated balloon.

  “I could keep you like this for hours, you know,” she said casually. “Days, if I so choose. Of course, your bladder would rupture and you’d be rendered impotent for the rest of your life. ” She tilted her head to one side, as if studying an unusual insect. “I don’t understand what she sees in you. She must have a real weakness for fuck-ups with a taste for destructive relationships.” As she laughed, her features began to shift, her lips swelling, her chin becoming baby-doll round, while her hair turned the color of raw honey and tripled in length.

  “Hi, baby!” Lola grinned, her eyes screened by twin reflective mirrors. “Did you miss me?”

  Palmer screamed and covered his eyes, suddenly free of the paralysis. When he lowered his hands, he found himself alone in his room. The connecting door between his hotel room and Sonja’s was standing ajar. Shivering like a half-drowned cat, he peered through the doorway and saw Sonja standing in the far corner of the darkened room, wearing here own face. Her arms were wrapped around her stomach, as if she was struggling to keep something escaping her body as she banged the back of her head against the wall.

  “Get out!” she growled. Palmer couldn’t tell if she was pleading with or threatening him. “Get out of here before I hurt you, damn it!”

  Palmer slammed the door shut and locked it behind him with trembling hands. Then he heard her talking to someone—or thing—and what sounded like someone answering in a harsh, almost bestial voice. Then he heard furniture being trashed.

  He retreated to the bathroom. He needed to take a shower. He wanted the hot water to turn his flesh the same boiled-lobster red as that of the burning man guarding Morgan’s nest. Maybe if he could scrub off a layer or two of skin, he’d feel clean again.

  He sat on the toilet, smoking a cigarette with shaking hands, and watched the steam turn the mirror opaque, almost obscuring the tobacco demon squatting on his shoulder.

  Ghost Trap

  A savage place! As holy and enchanted

  As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted.

  —Samuel Coleridge, Kubla Khan

  Chapter Ten

  She found him drinking espresso in a dark, smoky coffee bar across the street from the hotel. The sun was going down and she had her shades on. He glanced up from his drink, shrugged, and motioned for her to take a seat.

  He expected her to say she was sorry or try to explain herself in some way. Instead, she touched the top of his right hand with the index finger of her left hand. Palmer gasped as her mind flowed into his. It was as unlike the brutal intrusion of the night before as a lover’s caress from a rapist’s groping.

  There were no words offered, only emotion, creating a sense of intimacy which was both thrilling and intimidating. The temptation to let go, to lose himself in telepathic rapport, was strong. But so was his sense of self. Recognizing his fear of being subsumed, she voluntarily broke contact. Palmer coughed into his fist and took another sip of espresso to steady himself.

  “We’re still good,” he with a nod of his head.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the paperback book at his elbow.

  “I decided to do a little research while you were getting your beauty sleep.”


  She picked up the book, turning it so she could read the cover. “The Architect’s Guide to Haunted Houses?”

  “I found it at City Lights Bookstore. Check out page 113.”

  Sonja opened the book and began to read:

  Northern California has long demonstrated an allure for the eccentric, the artistic and the wealthy. One of the strangest transplanted Californians to combine these elements was the architect-millionaire Creighton Seward (1870- 1939). Although brilliant and highly acclaimed in his lifetime, Seward has been lost in the shadow cast by his contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright. The fact that all but a handful of his buildings have been destroyed in the decades since his death has also helped condemn him to obscurity. Yet none who have glimpsed his ultimate creation can deny that Seward’s genius was as real as the tragedy that ultimately consumed him.

  In 1907, after spending a decade designing competent but otherwise uninspired skyscrapers and homes for the upper class of the Great Lakes, Seward traveled to the Mediterranean with his young family, renting a villa on the island of Cythera. What truly happened there will never be known, save that Seward was found roaming its rugged hills, wearing nothing but the blood of his wife and children.

  According to the Greek authorities who investigated the incident, a disgruntled former servant murdered the entire household with an ax while they slept. The only reason Seward survived was that he’d been awakened by the killer hacking his wife apart in the bed next to him and succeeded in overpowering him, smashing his attacker’s skull open with the very same weapon used to dispatch his hapless family.

  However, there were rumors that the ax-murderer was actually Seward himself, although no one could provide motivation for him committing such a heinous act. That Seward later spent three years in a private asylum following his return from Greece did nothing to stop the gossip.

  It wasn’t until 1910 that Seward resumed his work as an architect. And it soon became obvious that whatever he had endured that night on Cythera had changed him forever. His new work was so removed from his previous output that it seems impossible the same brain was involved in their design.