In the Blood (Sonja Blue)

by Nancy A. Collins

  Sonja didn’t answer him. She was still puzzling his question when Anise led her out of the parlor and into the hallway.

  The nucleus of Ghost Trap, when compared to its protective outer layers, was merely yet another large, Victorian mansion filled with antiques. With its antimacassars and overstuffed furniture it looked more like it should belong to someone’s dotty great aunt rather than a vampire lord.

  Anise motioned to a small, narrow door set into the side of a staircase. “This leads to an underground tunnel that connects to what used be the stables. It’s how Morgan and the Renfields get come in and out.”

  “What are you doing out of your room?”

  Anise gasped as she looked up to see a stern-faced woman with the characteristic wan complexion and pinched face of a Renfield glowering down at her over the staircase banister.

  “I was bored,” she explained, as Sonja disappeared into the shadows. “I wanted to take a walk.”

  “You know you’re not allowed to roam the house unsupervised!” the Renfield scolded as she hurried down the stairs. “Did Dr. Howell tell you to do this?” There was an edge in her voice suggesting she would like nothing better than to accuse the good doctor of something more serious than malpractice.

  “No one told me to do anything! It was my decision to go for a walk.”

  The Renfield frowned as if Anise had suddenly started speaking in Swahili. “No one decides things for themselves in Ghost Trap. Besides, I heard talking to someone. Who was it?”

  “I was talking to the baby, that’s all,” Anise explained, patting her belly.

  The Renfield’s lips peeled back, like those of a rabid dog, displaying a set of yellowed teeth. “You’re a lying little shit.”

  Anise slapped the woman so hard it knocked the Renfield to the floor. The human servant got back to her feet, blood drooling from her mouth.

  “I don’t care if you are his prize broodmare,” the Renfield snarled, her eyes burning with hate. “I’m going to burn your brain for that!”

  “I don’t think so,” Sonja said as she stepped out of the shadows. She grabbed the Renfield by the neck and twisted her wrist. The psychic dropped to the floor like a sack of cement.

  “You killed her!” Anise gasped.

  “I couldn’t risk her raising the alarm,” Sonja grunted, considerably less distraught by the situation. “C’mon. We’re wasting time!” she said as she threw the corpse over her shoulder and opened the door leading to the tunnel.

  “You’re taking her with us?” Anise grimaced.

  “We can’t leave Little Miss Sunshine here lying around for the housekeeper to stumble over,” Sonja pointed out. “I’ve got to stash the stiff somewhere, don’t I?”

  Anise followed Sonja into the space under the stairs, where they wedged the Renfield’s corpse in a corner then descended a short, wooden stairway leading to a dark, brick-lined tunnel. The place smelled of damp earth, spiders and rat piss. At the far end of the tunnel was a series of iron rungs leading to an overhead trapdoor. Sunlight filtered around the cracks, illuminating fungus spores dancing lazily in the air.

  “Okay, up you go, young mother,” Sonja said, gesturing to the ladder.

  Anise placed a hand on the bottom rung, looked up at the dim sunlight, then back at Sonja. “What about Fell?”

  “He had his chance,” she replied evenly.

  “But he doesn’t understand! He’s still asleep, like I was. Maybe if I tried talking to him, maybe then he’d listen and let you wake him you, like you did me.”

  “Anise...”

  “I didn’t ask for this!” Her voice was both angry and frightened, like a child trying to control her sense of betrayal. “All I wanted was to get rid of my nightmares! Now I wake up from a dream and find myself still in the nightmare. Everything is upside down and crazy. Suddenly I’m pregnant and married and I don’t know how it happened or why. For the love of God, I’m a lesbian! But still, Fell’s the father of my child. I can’t just leave him behind, can I?”

  “Anise, if you go back in there, you may never get out again. And even if you do, how are you going to escape the valley? You’re not going to get very far on foot in your condition.”

  “I may have put East Oakland behind me,” Anise replied. “But I still remember how to boost a car.”

  “Very well. Go back and get him, if you can. There’s a little town nearby called El Pájaro. We’ll rendezvous at the motel—it’s the only one, so you can’t miss it. Look for a rented Ford Escort.”

  Anise nodded her understanding. As she turned to go head back down the tunnel, Sonja grabbed her arm one last time. “I warn you—if you fall back under Morgan’s control, I’ll have to kill you. Is that clear?”

  “It’s been a hundred and fifty years since the Emancipation Proclamation,” Anise said gravely. “I have no intention to bring a child of mine into the world as a slave.” She paused, and then flung her arms around Sonja, dragging her into a hasty embrace.

  Sonja returned the hug. “God’s speed, sister,” she whispered. She then watched Anise disappear into the darkness, and then climbed into the sunlight, her eyes frustratingly dry.

  Anise

  No woman can call herself free who does not own or control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.

  —Margaret Sanger

  Chapter Fourteen

  Palmer was well into his second pack of cigarettes by the time Sonja re-emerged from the undergrowth. He got up from where he’d been squatting in the shade, the binoculars’ eyepieces capped. He had stopped studying Ghost Trap shortly after Sonja entered the building. He didn’t like the reverberations the house kicked up in his hindbrain. He grinned a welcome to his partner, actually surprised to find himself glad to see her.

  “It’s about time you got back! I was starting to get worried. There’s only an hour or two before it gets dark. So, did you off the bastard?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “You did kill him, didn’t you?” he asked nervously. “I mean, we’re not going to have to worry about some heavyweight bogeyman coming down on our asses after the sun goes down, are we?”

  “We’ll talk about it later, Palmer.”

  “You didn’t do it,” he said flatly, his smile abruptly dissolving.

  “I said we’ll talk about it later!”

  Palmer ground out his smoldering cigarette with a sharp twist of his heel. “I should have known,” he muttered as he crawled behind the wheel. “I should have fuckin’ known.”

  The Parakeet Motel provided the only lodging in El Pájaro, a tiny hamlet of three thousand souls located in the Sonoma foothills. Palmer scowled at the sign fronting the parking lot, which depicted a budgie, its once-bright colors now badly faded, locked within a birdcage fashioned from neon tubing. He looked up as Sonja returned from the registration desk, sliding into the passenger seat next to him. She held up a piece of pink plastic with a key dangling from its end.

  “I told him we were a honeymooning couple and didn’t want to be bothered, so he stuck at the far end, away from the other guests.”

  “So I see,” Palmer commented dryly, scanning the empty gravel parking lot. He put the car into gear.

  The L-shaped motor court was made of pick the color of well-chewed bubble gum and the interior of the room was no better, with pale bisque walls and a carpet looked, and felt, like dropped cotton candy.

  “I feel like I’ve been swallowed by a huge snake,” Palmer groaned as he eyed the worn pink chenille spread covering the queen-size mattress.

  Sonja stared for a long moment at the picture hanging over the bed of a praying child with huge, waifish eyes and a tiny mouth set into a simpering pout before yanking it off the wall and sailing it into a corner. She flopped heavily onto the bed, boots and all, the box springs squealing in protest.

  Palmer was surprised at how tired she looked. Since their lives had become entangled, he had never experience
d Sonja as anything less than preternaturally intense. The sight of her sprawled across the bed sparked both a sense of uneasiness and a vague lust in him.

  “I feel so old sometimes,” she said wearily as she slowly rubbed her forehead. “So horribly, horribly old. And I’m not even a hundred yet. I wonder how the truly ancient ones feel, like Pangloss? They must be so very tired. I’ve heard that when they grow weary of continuing, they simply go into a hibernation that can lasts for years, even decades. Sleep: the stepchild of Death.” Her voice had a smoky, far-away feel to it. Palmer wondered if she was aware she was speaking aloud.

  He sat next to her on the bed and stared at the worn carpet between his shoes. “Are you going to tell me what happened inside Ghost Trap?”

  “I discovered I’m not alone,” she replied.

  He turned to stare at her in surprise. “What?”

  In a soft, weary voice she told him about Anise and Fell and Morgan’s plan to breed his own race of designer-gene vampires.

  “And you left them there?” he asked in disbelief. “Alive?”

  “You don’t understand, Palmer...”

  “You’re damn right I don’t understand! Why didn’t you kill them?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t, you mean!”

  “No. Couldn’t.”

  Sonja removed her sunglasses, exposing her eyes to him for the first time. There were no whites or cornea, merely blood red dominated by huge pupils that were dilated to maximize even the feeblest light source. They were the eyes of a hybrid, neither human nor vampire. At first he was repulsed by how raw and inhuman they’d looked, but now he could see a perverse beauty in them.

  “I used to think I could reclaim what I once was by killing what I’d become. It hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time for me to finally start building instead of destroying. I’ve been lonely, Palmer; so terribly lonely.”

  He kissed her without really knowing why, but at the same time was confident the action was his and his alone. She responded quickly, wrapping her arms about him. His hands slipped under her shirt, his fingers tracing the scars left by old wounds. She arched her back and moaned in pleasure, her muscles rippling like those of a great cat. As she stripped away her shirt, he saw that her torso was pale as white opal and covered in scars. As he ran his hands over her body, instead of being repulsed, he found himself fascinated by the complex designs they formed. It was like reading Braille; each scar a story bonded forever to her flesh. She helped him out of his clothes, her fingers tracing, in turn, the scar over his heart. Palmer felt a tremor of apprehension in the back of his mind, as memories of Lola briefly surfaced, then disappeared.

  She closed around him like a velvet fist, her arms and legs wrapped about his own, holding him fast. Although he knew there was no way he could break free of her embrace, he felt no urge to escape it. Her mind reached out and touched his, teasing it from its cage of bone. She laughed, a telepathic bird song echoing inside his head, as she urged him to surrender both body and mind to his passion.

  As he shucked his skin, the jungle surged behind his eyelids. He saw a beautiful woman with intricate ritual designs scratched into her cheeks and brow smiling at him. The smell of burning copal filled his nostrils. Then he was free of his flesh, their minds twining together like mating snakes. He could not see her, but he knew Sonja was there, both within and outside him. It was a delicious feeling, one that transcended the human physical vocabulary. It went beyond any sensations he’d ever derived from sex or drugs or any form of carnal gratification. He experienced the raw essence of orgasm, cut free of biological imperative, the promised reward of the faithful: the thousand-year climax.

  Suddenly he was back in his body, to find himself rutting like a bull in heat. Sonja convulsed under him, thrusting her pelvis against his with bruising urgency. His shoulders stung and something warm trickled over his bare skin. The sight and smell of his blood dripping from her fingernails stoked his lust even higher. She arched her back, her muscles as taut as bowstrings, and hissed like a cat, her lips pulled back in a rictus grin as she bared her fangs. Palmer groaned as her contractions milked him dry.

  He lay atop her, sweat and blood drying on his back, and smoothed the hair away from her face. There were no words. None were needed. He studied the tilt of her cheekbones and the shape of her nose in the failing daylight that filtered through the drawn curtains. As he drifted into sleep, it occurred to him that this was the first time in decades he hadn’t needed a smoke after sex.

  The next thing he knew the room was in deep shadow and someone was knocking at the door. Sonja moved with the speed and agility of an animal, untangling herself from their lover’s embrace. She moved so fast he didn’t even see her slip her glasses back on.

  Palmer quickly yanked on his pants and moved to answer the door, minus his shirt and shoes. He saw Sonja out of the corner of his eye, moving along the baseboard like a tiger preparing to pounce. The sight of her muscles coiling and uncoiling underneath her moon-pale skin sparked a brief rush of lust in his loins.

  He opened the door the width of the safety chain and peered out at the small-boned African-American woman who stood shivering in the chill mountain air.

  “Whattayawant?” he grunted.

  The woman tossed back her cornrowed braids, revealing eyes that gleamed like polished rubies. “I need to see Sonja.”

  “It’s okay. Let her in.”

  Palmer opened the door and Anise hurried inside the room. She wore a loose cotton dress with dark, tulip-shaped stains on its front.

  “Where’s Fell?” Sonja asked, motioning for Palmer to keep watch at the window as she finished getting dressed.

  “It went bad,” Anise replied, her voice trembling on the edge of tears. “Worse than I thought it ever would. I’m lucky I got away.”

  “What happened?”

  “I went back and tried to talk to him, like I said I would. But it was impossible! It was like his ears were sealed with wax. I told him that I didn’t love him—that I wasn’t going to be Morgan’s brood bitch anymore. He tried to keep me from leaving. I ended up hitting him with one of the fire tools. There was a lot of blood. I tied him up and stuffed him in one of the closets. While I was busy doing that, I was surprised by another Renfield. I had no choice,” she said, grimacing in distaste. “I killed him with my bare hands.”

  “How did it feel?” Sonja asked.

  Anise stopped her pacing and scowled. Easy. Too easy.”

  “And…?” Sonja prodded.

  “It felt good,” she admitted with a shudder. “Sweet Jesus, what am I turning into? What did that bastard do to me?”

  Sonja did not answer because there was nothing she could say that would make the situation better. It had been so long since she had last believed herself human, but she could remember the horror that had accompanied the realization that she was forever beyond mortal ken. She imagined how it must have been for Anise to come to her senses and find herself not only married to a man she didn’t love and pregnant against her will, but no longer human. She was humbled by her sister’s underlying strength that her mind had not crumbled under the weight of it all. Still, she could not help but wonder how long it would be before Anise’s own version of the Other made itself known.

  “Think you’re up to a three-hour drive to San Francisco?” she asked.

  “We sure as hell can’t stay here,” Anise grunted. “Father probably has his prize Renfield out looking for me. I’m ready to go whenever you are—uh-oh.” Anise suddenly grimaced in pain. “I think I spoke too soon.”

  Palmer looked like he’d just swallowed a lemon. “Does she mean what I think she means?”

  As if in answer, Anise’s water broke onto the dirty pink shag carpet.

  “I’m afraid so,” Sonja sighed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The first contraction doubled Palmer over. He was coming from the bathroom when it hit, crashing against him like a wave. The phantom pain radiating from his pe
lvis caused him to stagger and nearly drop the armload of towels he was carrying.

  “Screen yourself! She’s broadcasting!” Sonja barked.

  “Now you tell me,” Palmer groaned as he struggled to erect a mental barrier between him and the laboring vampire.

  Anise gave a strangled cry and dug her fingers deep into the mattress, shredding the bedclothes like rotten silk. Palmer felt the pain press against his shield like a heavy, insistent hand, but, remarkably, the barricade held.

  “This is not good. Not good at all,” Sonja said as she brushed a stray lock of hair from her face, leaving a smear of Anise’s blood on her brow. “She’s broadcasting like a damn satellite! Of all the times for her psychic powers to kick in! The Renfields will be zeroing in on our location soon, if they aren’t already.”

  “Is there any way we could get her in the car and back to San Francisco?” Palmer asked. “At least we stand a chance there. If nothing else, we could get Pangloss to help us.”

  Sonja shook her head. “She’s already crowning. Besides, Pangloss would kill her and the baby.”

  Palmer glanced over at Anise, who lay on her back, gripping the bedstead with bloodless hands. A lamp situated on the dresser, its light muted by a towel thrown over the shade, provided the room’s only illumination. The way she lay there sweating and grunting, with her dress pushed up and her knees open, was so primeval that all that was missing was a shaman shaking a rattle to complete the scene.

  “How long before the baby comes?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard enough to tell with a normal pregnancy, much less something like this. But it’s going to be soon.”

  “Great,” he grunted, rolling his eyes.

  “Better put your gun back on,” Sonja said, nodding to holstered .38 hanging from the back of a chair. “We may need it to get out of here, if Morgan’s hounds show up soon.”

  “Sonja?” Anise called out. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here, sis. I’m not going anywhere,” Sonja replied as she returned to Anise’s bedside, mopping the sweat from her face with a damp washcloth. “How you doing, kid?”