Palmer jumped to his feet and ran, screaming at the top of his lungs. He had to find his way out of the House of Horrors. He’d been too long at the fair. It was time to go home.
He bolted from the death-room and down a corridor lined with doors of varying shapes and sizes. Suddenly one of the doors opened outward and he heard something cut the air with a wicked slicing sound.
The last thing Palmer saw before the darkness claimed him was the word DUNLOP.
Chapter Twenty
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig,” Sonja muttered as they stepped from the secret passage into the suite of rooms Fell had once called home.
“I never knew this doorway existed,” he marveled aloud. “I don’t think Morgan or the Renfields did, either.”
“It looks like it was created by the carpenters who worked on the house. It’s not on any of the blueprints. The building’s probably lousy with them.”
Fell picked up a paperback from its resting place on the table next to Anise’s old easy chair. He fanned the pages and put it back down. “It’s hard for me to believe that she’s really gone. I can still smell her…” He walked over to the fireplace and stared at the room’s reflection in the mirror that hung over the mantelpiece, as if trying to catch a glimpse of the past in its depths. “Do you know what the last thing she said to me was?” he asked, nodding at the room in the looking glass. “She told me this was a cage. A prison. She was right, of course. I can see the bars now. But for a while, this was the happiest place on earth. I...” He shook his head, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Damn you, Sonja! Why did you have to come into our lives? Why did you force this knowledge on us?”
“I wish I could say I did it because truth is freedom, and living in ignorance is no different than living in slavery,” she admitted. “But that would be a lie. I did it because I wanted to hurt Morgan him where he’d feel it most. And because I wanted you for myself.”
Fell frowned. “Me?”
“You, Anise, the baby. I’ve been hungry for the company of my own kind for a long, long time. But I’m sterile, a mule; I can’t Make others like myself, like Morgan and the others can. Sometimes loneliness makes you do things that are selfish. I hope you can understand and can come to forgive me.”
“It doesn’t matter if your motives were selfish,” Fell replied. “What you said about living in ignorance and slavery is still the truth. It’s just that surrendering the dream isn’t easy, but now I know I don’t have to do it alone.”
“I know coming back here is painful for you, but we’ve got to dispatch Morgan as soon as possible. He’s here, somewhere in the house. I can feel him,” Sonja said, looking around the room warily.
Fell’s mouth pulled into a grimace. “I can feel him, too, like a phantom limb.”
She was here. He sensed her presence in his lair the way a spider monitors the strands of its web. How could he have slept, unaware, when first she walked these halls? How could he have remained insensate to anything so exquisitely deadly entering his domain?
At first he’d refused to believe the woman called Sonja could have been one of his by-blows. But now there was no denying it. His was the hand that had sown this dragon’s tooth. In a perverse way, he was proud of her. Even from such far remove, there was no mistaking her lethality. She was a thing of fatal beauty, to be feared and admired, like an unsheathed samurai sword. To know that he had created such a fearsome creature was flattering. Such a pity she must be destroyed.
The rogue’s signature was so powerful it took him a moment to realize that she had the breeder, Fell, was with her. Interesting. There also seemed to be something different to male dhampire’s psychic echo. A trace of free will, perhaps? Most interesting. If the breeders and their potential gets harbored potential similar to the rogue’s, then Howell’s sabotage had, in the end, had him a favor. What was the advantage to siring a new race of vampires to serve as his army, only to have them overthrow him?
Morgan rose from the chair in his study and opened an antique wardrobe with the blacked-out mirror. He wanted to look his best when he formally confronted his long-lost daughter and his errant son.
“Who are you? Are you one of Morgan’s lickspittle servants? Answer me! I didn’t hit you with the golf club that hard!”
Palmer opened his right eye, and then tried to open the left, only to find it swollen shut. He seemed to be lying on rough wooden floorboards.
“Wh-where am I?” he moaned as he struggled to sit up.
“Never mind where you are! Answer my question?” A balding man dressed in a grimy lab technician’s coat, a stethoscope looped around his neck like a pet boa constrictor, thrust a florid Palmer’s field of vision. His forehead bulged slightly, as if his forebrain was slightly too large for his skull, and his eyes, amplified by Coke-bottle thick glasses, regarded Palmer with a detached, almost reptilian interest. Despite his odd appearance, there was something familiar about the stranger Palmer could not quite place.
“I’m not a Renfield, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said, cradling his bleeding head.
The moon-faced stranger grunted in distaste and swiftly shoved his hand inside Palmer’s trench coat, removing his wallet and scanning the identification inside. His eyebrows raised themselves upon the sight of the Private Investigator’s license.
“Hey! Whattaya think you’re doing?” Palmer reached for his Luger, only to find the holster empty.
“Looking for this?” The moon-faced man extracted Palmer’s gun from the pocket of his lab coat. “I might not be a private detective, Mr. William Calumet Palmer, but I know enough to disarm a potential enemy once I’ve knocked him unconscious.” He snorted and tossed the wallet into Palmer’s lap.
“I’d rather you not include the ‘Calumet’ part, whoever you are,” Palmer groaned as he looked around the room, which was cramped and filled with metal tables littered with glass beakers and Bunsen burners. “I told you who I am, now return the favor. And why did you smack me in the head with a golf club?”
“I am Dr. Brainerd Howell, late of his diabolical majesty Lord Morgan’s service.” The scientist said, bowing at the waist with the heel-clicking propriety of a Prussian nobleman. “Forgive me for introducing myself in such a fashion, but I had no way of knowing you weren’t one of Morgan’s minions.”
Suddenly Palmer realized where he’d seen Howell’s face before. “You’re the one I saw looking out the window the when I was surveying the house!”
“Not impossible, I grant you. But why are you here, Mr. Palmer? This is hardly a place for sightseeing.”
“I’m trying to find someone.”
“Indeed.” Howell’s smile widened as his eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t happen to be searching for the young woman who entered the house earlier? The one with the sunglasses?”
“How did you know about her?”
“There’s precious little that goes on in Ghost Trap that I don’t know about,” Howell sniffed. “I daresay I have a better understanding of its secrets than its supposed master.”
Palmer groaned as he got to his feet. Howell watched him cautiously but did not try to stop him or threaten him with the gun. As the private investigator straightened up, he spotted a ten-gallon jar full of a clear liquid, in which was suspended a monster-fetus identical to the one Anise had given birth to, its umbilical cord attached to a pulpy yolk sac.
“Holy Christ!”
“Ah! I see you’ve noticed my little friend. How do you like him, hmmm?” Howell leaned forward, eyeing the monstrosity in the glass jar with something resembling affection. “It was the prototype for a parasite-clone I succeeded in implanting in his precious broodmare’s unhallowed womb.” Howell removed a syringe from one of his pockets and tapped the side of the jar. The fetus opened its eyes, revealing the cold, needful stare of an insect. The sight of Howell’s face, distorted by the glass and the synthetic amniotic fluids that sustained it, caused the fetus to extend its hideous tube-like mouth. Howell chuckled indulgently. “How c
ute! It thinks it’s feeding time!”
“You’re responsible for that... that thing Anise gave birth to?” Palmer asked, unable to hide the revulsion in his voice.
Howell gave Palmer a sharp glance. “You saw it?”
“You could say that,” Palmer grimaced, rubbing his calf.
“Yes, I created it. I bioengineered the creature from the breeders’ own sperm and ovum, so there would be little chance of rejection, then implanted it in Anise during a prenatal exam. I performed the operation under Morgan’s very nose! He may be wise in the ways of the supernatural world, but when it comes to science, he might as well be a potato-munching peasant, fearful of the shaman’s magic!” Howell said with a rueful sneer. “The parasite was supposed to devour the original fetus and take its place. It was the best I could do to try and make amends for betraying mankind. However, during Anise’s last prenatal checkup, I detected two heartbeats.” He leaned forward, eyeing Palmer intently. “You were there at the birth. The child is dead, is it not?”
“Yes,” Palmer lied.
Howell smiled grimly. “Good! The extinction of the human race has been averted—for now. Morgan—the preening fool—had no idea of what he was unleashing on his world, as well as ours.”
“How so?”
“Morgan’s breeders can only reproduce with others of their kind, which are— mercifully—rare. But the child—the child would possess the ability to mate with humans and still breed true.”
“And your changeling was an improvement?”
“The creature you saw was designed so that it would have no means of eliminating waste products, once severed from the umbilical cord. The pathetic little monster was destined to die of uremia within a day or so of its birth.”
As he listened to Dr. Howell rattle on, Palmer shook his head in an attempt to clear the ringing in his ears. The scientist clucked his tongue in reproach. “I wouldn’t bother trying to get a better grip on your senses if I were you. It won’t do you any good. This room—my ‘secret laboratory’ if you will—is located in Ghost Trap’s attic, at an intersection of several architectural impossibilities. The barriers separating the space-time continuum are very thin here, weighting the probability factors for my experiments in my favor. Morgan and his loathsome Renfields shun the outer house, but I find it helps me think. This is where I do all my plotting against Morgan.”
“Fell said that you had been kidnapped, is that true?”
“In its way,” Howell replied with a shrug. “I came here of my own free will, but when I realized what I was mixed up with, I discovered I could no longer leave. I’ve been trapped here for years, just like the ghosts you saw wandering about the lower floors. I mean to see the undead bastard broken and ground to paste, just like as he destroyed my career. And best of all, I’ve managed to do it under his very nose without him suspecting a thing. He and his despicable little skull-peepers find my thoughts opaque, you see,” the geneticist laughed, tapping his over-sized cranium. “I confuse them by thinking in terms of formulae, and riding the white tiger. Surrounded by a nest of telepaths, I have succeeded in keeping my thoughts to myself for over five years!”
“But why were you working for him in the first place?”
“I am Dr. Brainerd Howell. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Uh, well, I...”
“Well, does it?”
“No,” he admitted.
“And why should it?!” Howell said angrily. “For years I’ve been kept locked away from my fellow scientists, unable to communicate my discoveries as I struggled to discover a means of scientifically replicating the effects of a vampire’s bite on a human. I have succeeded in working the darkest of miracles, melding the world of science with the world of the paranormal—and there is no one to see it! No one to nominate me for a Nobel prize! No one to make sure my name goes down in the history books along with Pasteur! Einstein! Salk!”
“You left out Frankenstein, Mengele and Benway,” Palmer added.
“Don’t get smart with me!” Howell snapped, his pupils contracted down into pinpricks as he jabbed a finger in Palmer’s face. “I could stick you with a hypo full of miracle juice that would make your amino acids square dance. ‘Swing your partner! Do-si-do! He’s got three eyes and no more nose!’ How’d you like that, Mr. Mr. Private Detective?”
“Calm down, Doc! I didn’t mean anything by it! Honest!”
“It took five hundred experimental subjects before I finally perfected the serum that produced Anise and Fell. Even then, the failure rate was eighty percent.”
“You sound real calm about that.”
“Do I?” Howell sighed, rolling up the sleeve of his coat, exposing a pale, surprisingly hairy arm. The inside of his left elbow looked like a pincushion. He took a small plastic bag of white powder from his breast pocket and mixed it with distilled water in a beaker suspended over a flickering Bunsen burner. “Appearances can be deceiving, Mr. Palmer,” he murmured as he wrapped a length of rubber tubing above his elbow. “Very much so.”
Sonja scanned the main floor only to have it come up empty of Renfield activity. By her count, all but one of the psychics had been disposed of, one way or another. That left Nasakenai, the one Fell claimed was Morgan’s heavy gun. High-caliber Renfields weren’t easy to come by, and Morgan sure as hell wouldn’t waste one by marching him into a meat grinder like the Ghost Trap.
She glanced over her shoulder at Fell, who drifted behind her, staring at the sections of the house he had never been allowed to enter. Outside of the three interconnected rooms that had served as Anise and Fell’s bridal suite, the main floor so far seemed to consist of a retrofitted country kitchen, several large, disused parlors full of dusty Victorian love seats and moth-eaten taxidermy foxes, and what had once been a conservatory before the glass window panes had been bricked in.
As they reached the foot of the staircase that led to the second and third floors, Sonja paused to lean on the banister, peering up into the shadows of the next landing. “Do you have any idea what’s up there?” she asked.
Fell nodded. “Dr. Howell’s laboratory and Morgan’s library study are on the second floor. I’m not sure what else is up there. The Renfields kept their quarters on the third floor…” He frowned and fell silent, as if listening to distant music. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“Someone just called my name. It sounded like…” He shook his head. “No, that’s impossible.” He started a second time. “There it goes again!”
Sonja scowled and shook her head. “Kid, I don’t hear a damned thing.”
“Oh my God, it’s her!” Fell gasped, trembling like a foal. “It’s Anise!”
“Kid! Listen me to me!” Sonja said, grabbing his arm. “It’s a trick! Anise is dead! s Morgan’s playing a trick on you!”
“You don’t know that!” Fell retorted, jerking himself free of her grip. “You said so yourself that she was alive when you left the motel! How do you know she’s dead? Were you there? Did you see her die?”
“No, but-”
“Then how can you be so sure she’s dead?” He turned and looked toward the darkness at the top of the stairs. “Anise! Is that you, darling?” he called out. He smiled and turned Sonja, a jubilant smile on his face. “You heard her that time, didn’t you?” he asked excitedly. “She’s alive, Sonja! Alive!”
As he began to head up the stairs, Sonja reached out and grabbed him by the wrist, doing her best to hold him back. “Fell, no! Don’t!” she begged. “That’s not Anise you’re hearing! It can’t be!”
Fell spun about, fangs bared and eyes glinting red, and punched her in the jaw. She counted ten risers before the back of her head made contact with the flagstones at the foot of the stairs, turning everything black.
“Anise? Anise, where are you?” Fell called out. When she answered, her voice was so close it was as if she was whispering in his ear.
I’m upstairs, dearest. Waiting for you.
“Are
you all right?” Fell asked anxiously as he climbed the stairs that separated him from his love. “Sonja said you were dead. So did Morgan.”
I’m fine, sweet one. I’ve missed you so! I’m sorry about all those nasty things I said the last time we were together! I just wasn’t myself. That evil woman filled my head with all kinds of horrid nonsense. I was such a naughty girl to believe her!
Fell stood at the top of the second-floor stairs, looking around for some sign of her. “Where are you, darling?”
In the library, silly. Where else?
As she spoke the words in his head, the door to Morgan’s study swung open.
“Is it safe?” he asked nervously.
We have nothing to fear from him, Fell. He’s leaving us alone. We’ll never have to worry about him again.
Fell didn’t bother to question his luck. It was enough that his lover had returned to him and Morgan had fled. He hurried into the darkened library.
“Anise?”
She was standing in front of library’s huge fireplace, watching him with a coy, teasing smile on her lips. Her figure had returned to the trim proportions it had possessed before the pregnancy. She was beautiful and sexy and, best of all, she was alive. Anise held out her arms to him and Fell threw himself into her embrace.
“Thank God, it wasn’t true!” he exclaimed. “You’re alive! You’re alive!” But as he stepped back to feast his eyes on his beloved’s face, he found Nasakenai, the right half of his head swaddled in fresh bandages, returning his gaze. He backed away from the smirking Renfield, shaking his head in denial. “No! She’s alive! I heard her call my name!”
“You heard what you wanted to hear,” Morgan said. “You are still human in that regard!”
Fell turned to stare at the figure seated at the massive desk. Morgan, dressed in immaculate evening wear, leaned forward, resting his chin on his steepled fingers as he smiled at his former patient. “Behold, the errant son returns! Welcome home, my dear boy.”
“Fuck you, ‘Father’!” Fell snarled.
The vampire lord lifted an elegantly arched eyebrow as he clucked his tongue. “I see you’ve been exposed to the same corrosive influence as poor Anise. One night away from home and you’re already falling in with a bad crowd.”
In the Blood (Sonja Blue) Page 20