As these doubts rose within his mind, the sense of well-being returned, even stronger than before. So what if it was impossible? Big deal. Denise was alive and young right now, and that was all that mattered. He was being granted his heart’s desire, and he would be a fool not to take it.
Claude got to his feet, cradling Denise in his arms. She pillowed her head on his shoulder, the soft fragrance of her hair all around him. Denise was like a drug, insinuating herself into his bloodstream with every breath. He felt strangely invigorated, as if every cell were supercharged. He wanted to lose himself in her flesh and never return to reality. He was pleasantly surprised by the strength in his limbs. There was no more throbbing in his head or aching muscles, as if his decision to act upon his desire had been rewarded by the erasure of pain.
They lay together on the bed, and at first Claude was hesitant to make a move, but the way she wiggled against him dispelled his fear of offending her. She teased him with quick, birdlike kisses until his breath came in gasps and his heartbeat matched the throbbing in his crotch.
Suddenly they were naked but he had no memory of undressing. Not that it bothered him. He’d always hated that part, with its gradual unveiling of physical imperfection. Denise’s naked body seemed to give off a warm, diffuse glow that kept him from paying true attention to the details of her flesh.
He entered her, holding his breath lest she break. He needn’t have worried. She gasped and moved her hips to meet him, clutching at his buttocks with sharp fingernails. He was afraid he’d erupt upon insertion, but after the first few thrusts he relaxed, confident he would go the distance.
Denise clung to him, her legs wrapped around his hips. Her cries and whispers devolved into moans and shuddering gasps that seemed, at times, to come from someone else. Claude ignored it. He was riding a sleek dolphin, his arms and legs wrapped around its madly gyrating form as it shot through the waves. It was frightening and exhilarating and he never wanted it to end. He felt the urgency that heralds orgasm and strove to contain it. He didn’t want the ride to end. He opened his eyes, hungry for the sight of her face.
Denise’s eyes had been replaced by lozenges of mirrored glass. Her long, blond hair writhed like a sea anemone as it rearranged itself, growing shorter and darker. She smiled up at him, revealing fangs the color of aged ivory, but that didn’t scare him. What scared him was the fact he was still hard. He should have lost his erection the moment he realized what was under him; it should have deflated like a toy balloon, but it was still stiff. He tried to push himself off her, but Sonja pulled him back down.
“This is what you wanted all along, wasn’t it?” she leered as she moved her hips against his. They were Siamese twins, joined at the groin by a traitorous piece of flesh. “Kiss me, Claude. Kiss me . . .” She moaned as she laced her arms about his neck and dragged him toward her waiting mouth. Claude couldn’t decide whether he was going to vomit or orgasm.
She seemed genuinely surprised when he clamped his hands around her throat. His fingers tightened their hold as he continued to thrust between her legs. She struggled under him as he strove to squeeze life from her lungs while injecting it into her womb. Her legs flailed and her fingernails sliced into his face, but he refused to stop. He wondered if her head would come off in his hands like a Barbie doll’s.
“I should have known it was a trick!” he shouted at her. “I should have known it was too good to be true! You’re trying to turn me into a fucking Renfield! I’ll kill you for this, bitch!”
Suddenly Sonja Blue’s face disappeared as if someone had changed the channels on a television set. Claude found himself staring at a naked, middle-aged woman smeared makeup, crooked wig and bulging eyes, thrashing beneath him. As he loosened his grip on her throat, the woman reached inside his skull and squeezed his brain, just as he climaxed.
And then the light went out behind his eyes.
Catherine Wheele experienced a moment of sheer claustrophobic dread as Claude Hagerty collapsed on top of her, burying her alive under his bulk. She wriggled free, still reeking of sweat and jism, an ululating whine on her lips.
Her lungs were full of broken glass and razor blades. She touched her throat gingerly—it was already the size and color of a ripe eggplant. She stared at Claude’s body. She should have killed him the minute she saw him. That’s what Ezra would have told her to do. But, no, she had to try to make him one of her own, just in case Thorne got any bright ideas down the road.
Lobotomizing the bastard was too good for him. No one treated her like that! At least, no one still amongst the living. She opened her mouth and tried to curse the orderly, but succeeded in only making a hoarse, incoherent gargling sound. Her hands flew to her throat, prodding the swollen flesh with shaking fingers. She began to tremble, her eyes filling with tears. Her fear quickly gave way to rage and she threw herself on Claude’s body, pummeling it until she raised bruises on his unresisting flesh. She then lay exhausted sprawled on the rumpled bed, spent by her fury, as the last of Claude’s seed trickled down her thigh.
What had gone wrong? She’d provided the appropriate scenario, the proper stimulation and illusion. So what went wrong? She’d been in control, just like always...
“But that’s not completely true, is it?” said a familiar voice. “How did you like it, Kathy-Mae? Did you enjoy your first orgasm?”
Catherine clamped her hands over her ears and screwed her eyes shut. She recognized the voice and did not want to see what was sitting on the corner of her bed, watching her. She prayed it would go away and leave her alone.
“But I can’t go away, Kathy-Mae,” Sally laughed. “ I’m always with you, just like I promised. I came to warn you that you will be having visitors tonight. In fact, one of them is already at the gate.”
Catherine opened her eyes, but Sally was already gone. Or was she? Her old friend was right, though. She could feel something approaching, like a storm moving across the open plains. It was time to receive her guest.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sonja stood outside the gates of Catherine Wheele’s mansion, studying the brightly lit driveway and the phalanx of armed guards patrolling the green space around the house. Either the faith healer was a practicing paranoid or she was definitely expected.
She slipped over the top of the wall, oblivious to the pieces of broken bottle embedded in the mortar. Such precautions were good for deterring paparazzi and other celebrity-watchers, but not someone back from the dead.
Wheele had chosen her sanctum well. The mansion was located in an exclusive community situated far beyond the belt of suburban shopping malls and fast-food strips. A crushed shell drive curved through a stand of maples toward the front of the house. During the day the estate could pass for yet another stronghold of privilege. But at night . . . Well, that was a different matter. The manicured lawn shimmered in the light from the floods mounted in the trees, making the identical guards look like cardboard cut-outs. What should it be? Full frontal assault or a sneak approach? What the hell... Since they knew she was coming, why waste time on subtlety?
The driveway crunched beneath her boots as she made her way toward the house. The floodlights artfully mounted in the trees and bushes began to sputter and flicker like cheap Christmas lights as she strode past. She could feel the rage-joy creeping along her scalp, sending sparks from her fingertips. The darkness boiling in her belly was the antithesis of sight and sound and life. Light could not exist in her presence.
She scented the dog before she saw it. Seventy pounds of German shepherd came bounding out of the shrubbery, aimed for her throat. She caught the animal in mid-air, holding it by the scruff of its neck as she would a pup. Its death was swift and, compared to what was to come, merciful.
One of the Wheelers stood on the edge of the light, peering into the darkness, his automatic weapon at ready. “Shaitan! What is it, boy?” he called out.
He glanced about uneasily as the floodlights began to stutter. “Shaitan! Where are you? An
swer me, boy!”
The dog’s body struck the Wheeler in the face, knocking him to the ground. The short, staccato burst from his submachine gun shredded the surrounding bushes and shot out one of the faltering spotlights mounted in a nearby maple tree. The dazed Wheeler pushed the animal’s carcass off his chest. His nose was broken and he could taste blood at the back of his throat. He could hear his fellow Wheeler’s running in his direction, their dogs barking like mad. As he looked up, the last thing he saw were twinned reflections of his bloodied face in her sunglasses.
They found him dangling from the maple tree like a depraved Christmas ornament, his entrails spilled and looped into a hangman’s noose. Those guards who had yet to undergo the Heart’s Desire conditioning decided then and there to desert Sister Catherine to whatever it was that was stalking her. Bilking old ladies of their life savings and roughing up investigative journalists was one thing. This, however, was something else entirely. They seemed honestly surprised when Sister Catherine’s elite Wheelers opened fire, splashing their insides all over the front lawn.
The dogs began to howl and snarl, straining on their leashes and snapping at one another’s flanks. One of the animals, a Doberman, sniffed at the splattered remains of the deserters. When a second dog, a German shepherd, nosed the red mess; the Doberman sank his fangs into the shepherd’s shoulder. Within seconds the animals were engaged in a fierce melee, tearing at one another’s throats and testicles. One of the Wheelers made the mistake of trying to drag his dog free of the tangle ended up losing three fingers. Unable to safely separate the battling animals, and fearful of being turned upon, the remaining Wheelers had no choice but to shoot the crazed animals.
By the time the smoke cleared, there were two dead German shepherds, two dead Rottweilers, and three dead Dobermans on the lawn. A fourth Dobie—the one who’d started the fight— was still alive, although a bullet was lodged in its spine. The animal lay among its kennel mates, whining piteously as it tried to get back on its feet. The Wheeler who had lost his fingers to the dog finished it off with a short burst from his submachine gun.
The four remaining Wheelers stood and stared at the collection of dead men and animals heaped about them. The yard lights flickered, dimmed, flared briefly, and then went out.
“We have to get back to the house,” one of them said urgently. “We’re blind out here without the lights.”
“What about Gerald?” whispered the one with the maimed hand, his face pale from shock. “Shouldn’t we, you know, cut him down or something?’
“Fuck that,” the first Wheeler replied with a shrug. “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Where’s his gun?”
The submachine fire ripped through the assembled Wheelers like they were nothing more than plastic bags full of foam rubber and strawberry jelly. Sonja kept firing until the clip jammed, then tossed it away. By the time she was finished the mansion’s front drive resembled an abattoir more than a suburban front lawn.
As she approached t front door the porch light over her head flared, doubling its intensity before it exploded in a shower of frosted glass. The door was unlocked and she strode, unhindered, into the front foyer. She passed a large mirror set in a gaudy mock-rococo frame. Blank-eyed cherubs smiled at her amid a welter of gilt grapevines. She paused to stare at her reflection in the looking glass.
She was sheathed in a transparent caulk of darkness the color of a fresh bruise. The caul rippled and roiled like a jellyfish and, while she watched, extruded a tendril that groped blindly in the air as if scenting prey. She knew what it was seeking, and the knowledge neither thrilled nor dismayed her.
She was Shiva. She was Kali. She was all that is dark and terrible in nature, adored and scorned, worshipped and reviled. She felt no guilt or remorse. The dark energy that radiated from her was nothing more than human evil, recycled and refined until it was the psychic equivalent of rocket fuel.
Nobles could live for years on such stored power before requiring a recharge. But Sonja was an unfinished vessel. She could not properly synthesize the emotions she drained from others and was in danger of overloading and spontaneously combusting. She had to release the negative energy that had built up inside her before that happened. Nothing happens in the Real World that is not mirrored in the half-life of human existence, and part of her was still unwilling to unleash such evil on the innocent.
She extended her fangs and grimaced at the mirror. There was no point in pretending anymore, was there? The time had come for her to find her enemy and fight face-to-face, like a real monster.
(I’m in the study, bitch. Third door on your left.)
Sonja started at the sound of the voice in her head, the mirror and its reflection forgotten. The voice had been loud and clear, as if Wheele was standing at her elbow. So the televangelist was ready to throw down. Good. She was ready for a good, old-fashioned death match.
She felt like a Viking berserker, stoned on bloodshed and the inevitability of death. She was sweating heavily and her hands were trembling. Fire on the outside, fire on the inside. It would be so simple to surrender to the anger that frothed and foamed in her and charge into battle, screaming like a hell-bound soul. But she had to be careful. The last time she’d surrendered to mindless savagery Catherine Wheele had nearly stripped her of what sanity she still possessed. Still, the temptation to succumb to its dark embrace was strong.
Catherine Wheele was waiting for her in the darkened office, perched on the edge of a huge oaken desk. She was dressed in a silver lamé pantsuit with a pink cravat knotted around her neck. Her aura shimmered like heat rising from a summer sidewalk. The hate that radiated from her was nearly enough to make Sonja swoon. They were within easy striking distance of each other, not that it mattered. The attack, when it came, would not be on a physical level.
(You’ve caused me no end of trouble. I should have killed you right away, like Thorne said.)
Sonja flinched. She had to be careful and keep herself screened. Wheele had been inside her head before, and knew how to twist the knife for maximum effect.
“Why didn’t you, then? Kill me, that is. Why keep me around? Was it just simple greed?”
Wheele scowled and plucked at the scarf knotted under her chin, but did not reply.
“Or was there another reason for keeping me alive? Is it because we share something in common?”
Sister Catherine stiffened, her eyes slicing into Sonja like scalpels.
(Silence, Abomination!)
Sonja clutched her head, her vision momentarily dimmed by the thunder in her skull. Vampire or not, if Wheele ‘shouted’ like that again, she could very well turn her brains to soup.
“All monkeys aren’t in the zoo, are they?” Sonja jeered. “And all monsters aren’t locked up safe and sound.” That particular taunt won her another bolt of white-hot pain so severe she narrowly missed biting her tongue in two. “I’m not drugged and disoriented this time, Wheele,” she said, grimacing in agony. “You’ve got power—I’ll admit that—but you don’t know what to do with it.” She smiled bitterly as she heard an echo of Pangloss’s infernal wisdom fall from her mouth. “Look what you’ve chosen to do with your abilities: you bilk sick and deluded humans into giving you their money and—if they’re careless—their lives. How pathetic! It’s like using a laser to engrave postcards.”
Wheele glared darkly at her, but did not strike out with her mind as she had before. (You are hardly the person to lecture me on being humane.)
“At least I’ve tried to hold on to what little I have left. Speaking of which, where’s the orderly your goons snatched. Where’s Claude?”
Wheele’s answering smile was unpleasant. (He’s waiting for you, right here.) The televangelist gestured to the executive’s chair behind the desk, its back turned to them.
Sonja made her way around the corner of the desk, making sure to keep an eye on Wheele the entire time. As she touched the arm, the chair swiveled about. She knew she did not want to see what w
as sitting in the chair, but she could not bring herself to look away. Wheele’s voice became white noise in her head.
(Too much... bastard... crushed my larynx...squeezed the aneurysm in his brain… burst like an overripe tomato…)
Claude lay sprawled in the chair, staring at her with empty eyes. Every muscle in his face was slack and his jaw hung open like a broken gate. Drool oozed from the corner of his mouth and pooled onto his naked chest.
(He watched over you and you tried to return the favor. But you failed him. Just as your father failed you.)
Sonja angrily turned in Wheele’s direction, only to find the faith healer’s face had been replaced by a lump of shimmering light that seemed to grow with every heartbeat. She felt her own energy coalesce flare about her head, like the hood of a cobra. Long, snake-like tendrils emerged from the force field surrounding the faith healer until she resembled a Gorgon. The creepers hovered in the air for a second before snapping like whips and sinking their barbs into the bruise-colored corona that surrounded Sonja like an eclipsed sun.
The battle had begun.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The castle sat atop a foreboding mountain, looking down into a deep ravine, at the bottom of which wound a gray ribbon of cold alpine water. The storm outside its walls fitfully illuminated the dim corridor with sheets of lightning. All the rooms were full of heavy, ornate furniture covered with sheets. The huge portraits on the walls were coated with dust. Cobwebs hung from every corner like tattered mosquito netting, fluttering lazily in stray drafts.
The vampire killer stood in the main hall, holding the carpetbag that contained the tools of her trade. The peasant coach driver deposited her at the foot of the road that lead to the castle before driving away as fast as he could, leaving her to walk the rest of the way. Soon it would be dark, and she had to find the monster and stake it in its lair before it was too late. Hundreds had already suffered the beast’s leprous touch. Now the time had finally come to put an end to its unholy reign of terror, once and for all.
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