Twenty minutes later, after a hop in the shower and a change of clothes, Palmer knocked on the connecting door. “Sonja?” No answer. He knocked a little louder, and this time the door swung open. He stepped into the room, squinting into the darkness, only to jar his hip against the dresser opposite the bed. Cursing under his breath, Palmer glanced up into what he thought was the mirror, only to find himself staring at a blanket that had been tossed over it.
Vampires cast no reflection, he thought to himself. It was one of the few rules he remembered from the movies he had consumed as a child with such an uncritical eagerness and a sense of wonder so sincere it bordered on epiphany. For a brief moment he was back in his old room in all its preadolescent glory. He could smell the chemical stink of airplane glue as the Aurora models of Hollywood monsters dried on his desk; he could see the stacks of Famous Monsters of Filmland and well-thumbed Dr. Strange comic books stashed in the back of his closet. The flashback was so sharp, so immediate; he had to steady himself to keep from being lost inside it. His hand dropped to the top of the dresser and touched something smooth and cold, his fingers closing about it before he realized he had picked up her sunglasses.
It felt weird, holding them; as if he’d stumbled across her eyes sitting alone by themselves atop the bureau.
“Don’t turn around.”
Her voice was at his shoulder. She’d come up right behind him without his being aware of it. Sweat broke out on his brow and upper lip. He wondered what her eyes looked like. He recalled Pangloss’s reptilian pupils, and fought to repress a shudder.
Sonja’s arm reached around and plucked the glasses from his hand. He could hear the quick rustle of material as she pulled on her robe.
“Okay, it’s safe to look now.”
Palmer turned around just as she switched on the lamp next to the bed. She sat with her back against the headboard, her legs curled up under her like a cat. She was wearing the same kimono he’d seen in New Orleans. Her hair, still damp from the shower, was plastered against her milk-pale forehead like wet feathers. She was beautiful and she scared him more than anything he’d ever known.
“Sorry I walked in on you like that. I knocked . . .”
“Forget about it.” She motioned for him to be seated in the room’s only chair.
Unsure of what else he could do, he lit a cigarette and alternated blowing smoke rings and frowning while she related what Pangloss had said about Morgan being somewhere in the city and his connection with the real-estate agent.
“So, do you think we can trust him?”
“No, but I believe him, nonetheless.”
“What did he mean about the Real World?”
“I think you already have some idea as to that.”
“Yeah, well, sure-but I’m new to this. I don’t know the rules or even if there are any.”
Sonja sighed and looked into the far corner, as if watching something. “Humans think they know what reality is, what life’s about. They think ‘I’m at the top of the food chain, so I get to decide what’s real and what’s not.’ What they don’t want to be real therefore doesn’t exist, except, perhaps, in their dreams. Or nightmares. So they end up watching the shadows on the wall of the cave, thinking that’s how the world really is, without ever looking at the things throwing the shadows. Most humans are both separated from and yet a part of the Real World. They can look right at the vampires, ogres, succubi, and vargr without seeing them for what they truly are. And then there are the seraphim, like the old man on the curb…”
Palmer remembered the way the homeless person’s eyes seemed to burn like newly minted gold coins. “Are these Sara Lees, or what have you, dangerous?”
“It’s hard to say exactly what they are,” Sonja said with a shrug. “But one saved my life once. Take that for what you will.”
As the conversation fell into a lull, Palmer was suddenly aware he was sitting in a hotel room with a good-looking, half-naked woman. Although he wanted nothing more than to slam the door between his room and hers and barricade it with furniture, part of him also wanted to stay.
“It’s late and I’m exhausted,” he said with an awkward cough. “And I’m not used to being this nocturnal…”
As he moved to leave, Sonja reached out and grabbed his hand. He looked down at her and saw his embarrassed, nervous face reflected in her shades.
“I’m sorry if I frighten you,” she said. “I don’t mean to. But sometimes it’s so hard to control what I am.” She smiled then; it was as sad and delicate a gesture as he’d ever seen.”It’s just that sometimes I need to be reminded what it’s like...” She looked away and dropped his hand.
She didn’t have to finish the sentence because Palmer could hear it in his head: And sometimes I need to be reminded what it’s like to be human. He wasn’t sure if it was telepathy or simple empathy.
“Look, Sonja, it’s not that I don’t find you attract—”
“Just go to bed,” she said sharply, refusing to look at him.
Palmer did as she said, uncertain as whether it was his decision or. Within five minutes he was sound asleep. He didn’t hear her leave.
Sonja struck out toward Chinatown, scaling the steep hill with strong, purposeful strides. It would be another hour or so before sun rise. She still had plenty of time for hunting, although soon the narrow sidewalks would be crowded with cardboard boxes filled with exotic vegetables. Chinatown awoke early, which meant she was taking a huge risk. But she was keyed up and she needed to hunt, for fear of her frustrated energy turning itself on Palmer.
You should have made him fuck you. He owes you his life, after all.
She grimaced and tried to ignore the Other’s words. She knew all too well what would happen if she weakened and let it have its way. She paused, sniffing the chill morning air. She could hear the distant thrumming of the cable car track and, fainter still, the ringing of church bells.
She knew what she hunted was attracted to the homeless, as they made easy targets, and there were certainly enough to be found on the surrounding streets. She strode past a weary-looking couple—a woman and a man—squatting on the lower steps of a recessed doorway, keeping guard while their child slept on a pallet of folded cardboard behind. The woman watched her pass with tired, fearful eyes.
Sonja paused and sniffed the air. The scent was strong. She was close. Very close. She ducked into a narrow alley lined with aluminum trash cans filled with garbage. The odor was nearly overpowering enough to mask the scent she’d been following. But not quite.
The vargr rose from its hiding place among the jumbled garbage containers, growling a warning at the intruder who had dared to interrupt its meal. The werewolf stood almost six feet tall, despite its crooked legs. The pointed, vulpine snout curled into a menacing snarl, exposing sharp teeth stained with fresh blood and flecked with flesh and gristle. The savaged remains of a bag lady at its taloned feet. The beast’s russet pelt bristled, raising hackles along its curved back as its thin, pointed penis slid from its furred pouch in ritual challenge.
Sonja hissed, unsheathing her fangs, causing the werewolf to blink in confusion. It apparently had not figured her to be a fellow Pretender.
“Whassamatter, fur ball?” she snarled. “You too lap dog to take on someone who can fight back?”
She realized she was being foolhardy. Although vargr lacked psychic powers, they were as dangerous as vampires, since they were incredibly strong and damn near immortal. She wondered what the hell she was trying to prove to herself.
The werewolf stepped forward, tossing aside the fifty-gallon garbage cans as if they were ninepins. The beast reeked like a wet dog. Sonja took out her switchblade and pressed the ruby stud in the eye of the dragon decorating its handle.
The vargr halted in mid-step, its growl dissolving into a whine at the sight of the silver blade shaped like a frozen flame.
She launched herself at the werewolf, knocking it to the ground hard enough to make it yelp in surprise. The two opp
onents wrestled on the filthy bricks, knocking over even more garbage cans. Startled rats scurried for cover as the werewolf and the vampire battled one another in the filth.
Sonja, bleeding from a score of cuts from the man-beast’s talons, cried out as the vargr sank its teeth into her shoulder, worrying her like a dog’s chew toy. She slashed at the lycanthrope and was rewarded by a yowl of genuine pain and the smell of spilled blood. The creature let go of her shoulder, allowing her to stagger back onto her feet. She looked up and saw the vargr fleeing down the alleyway. He was on the verge of reverting to his human persona, and the way he was hunched over, clasping his belly, told her he was trying to keep his intestines from spilling out.
Suddenly her vision began to dim and her legs buckled underneath her. The werewolf’s attack had weakened her more than she realized. When she opened her eyes again it was to discover she had blacked out while propped against the alley wall. A strange man was kneeling over, rifling through her pockets. Her glasses were still on, so he couldn’t see that her eyes were open and that she was watching him as he counted the money in her wallet. The man gasped in surprise as the dead woman suddenly grabbed him by his shirt front and pulled him close, as if to whisper something in his ear.
Then there was only fear.
Chapter Eight
Russell Howard was a satisfied man. He was only thirty-seven, but already well on his way to becoming a multimillionaire. It wasn’t that long ago that he had been yet another struggling real estate agent, handling third-and fourth-rate rental properties on the wrong side of Army. Now he had a Lamborghini and his new office took up half a floor in a sparkling new high rise. His clients were amongst the wealthiest in the Bay Area, if not the state of California, and his name and face regularly graced the pages of the Chronicle. Yes, Russell Howard was on his way to very big things, thanks to his oh-so-silent partner.
However, despite all the doors his partner had opened for him, he didn’t like to think too much about him, as it tended to make his palms sweat and his brain itch. Sometimes thinking about his partner even gave him nightmares. But if there was anything Howard had learned from life, it was that money made everything better. And as long as the money continued to roll in, he was content to rarely think about what his partner truly was.
Howard watched the lengthening shadows fall across the floor and walls of his office. He’d just finished a late afternoon conference with a client and was trying to decide whether to go home to his family or treat himself to an escort. If he put in a call to the agency in the next half hour, he could be home in time to read his four-year-old daughter a bedtime story. Right now her favorite was Yertle the Turtle…
Russell Howard personal secretary looked up from her desktop computer screen to see two strangers, a man and a woman, enter the reception area. She frowned and glanced down at the calendar on her desk. It was near the end of the day and no further appointments were scheduled.
“May I help you?” she asked, moving to intercept them as they headed toward the door leading to her employer’s office.
The man spoke first. “We’re here to see Mr. Howard.”
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, her voice dripping icicles as she eyed his companion’s outfit.
“No. But he’ll see us anyway,” the woman in the leather jacket and mirrored glasses said.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Howard is a very busy man and—”
“It’s time to go home,” the woman in the sunglasses said firmly.
The secretary turned around and went back to her desk, switched off her computer, retrieved her purse from its hiding place in the filing cabinet, and marched out the door.
Russell Howard was in the process of calling the escort agency when two strangers, a man and a woman, entered his office unannounced. The man was in his late thirties, dressed in dark pants, a bulky sweater and a black raincoat. His hair was short and wiry, with streaks of gray at the temples, and his chin was bisected by a narrow width of beard that made him look like a punk pharaoh. The woman was much younger, wearing reflective sunglasses, tight-fitting jeans, steel-tipped boots and a battered leather jacket over a T-shirt, with dark, unruly hair made her look like an exotic bird.
“Who let you in?” he scowled, hanging up the phone. He stabbed the intercom button on his desk. “Patricia! Get these people out of my office!”
“She’s gone home,” the man said. “You work her too hard.”
“Who are you?” he asked, uncertain as to whether he should be worried by the arrival of the odd-looking couple. “What do you want?”
“My name is Sonja Blue, Mr. Howard,” the woman said, stepping forward. “My associate here is Mr. Palmer. As to what we want: we are looking for information about a certain individual, one we have reason to believe you deal with on a regular basis.” She motioned to the filing cabinets lining his office. “Check ‘em out.”
The man called Palmer nodded and yanked open the nearest cabinet and began rifling the files.
“You can’t do that!” Howard shouted, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato. “Get out of here before I call the police!”
The woman called Sonja Blue clucked her tongue reproachfully. “I don’t think the person I’m looking for would appreciate you calling the cops, Mr. Howard.” She took another step in the realtor’s direction, menace oozing from her like an expensive French perfume.
Howard’s heart iced over. He was all too familiar with the way the woman handled herself, as if impervious to threats and accustomed to power. Just like his partner. He made a strange gargling noise that sounded like a deaf-mute’s attempt at speech, his eyes riveted on the woman as she advanced on him. When she leaned across the desk and grabbed him, it was with the speed and precision of a cobra striking its prey.
He could see his own terrified face, twisted and twinned, reflected in her glasses as she jerked him toward her pale, ice maiden’s face by his silk power tie. His skin oozed beads of sweat like tiny pearls of mercury which raced down his brow and the back of his neck. His fear made her smile, revealing canines as white as new bone and sharper than hypodermics. Howard moaned.
“Pangloss wasn’t lying about this weasel’s connection to Morgan,” she said over her shoulder to her companion, giving Howard’s tie an extra tug. The realtor gasped and coughed and tried to free his neck of the silk garrote. The Windsor knot he’d tied that morning was now the size of a garden pea and could not be budged. The sudden realization that he would have to take a pair of scissors to the two hundred dollar tie in order to remove it was almost enough to make him forget his predicament.
The woman who called herself Sonja Blue abruptly surrendered her grip on the makeshift leash and sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his pool table-sized desk. Howard sat upright, attempted to straighten his ruined tie, and put on his best angry tycoon face, trying desperately to reassert himself.
“How dare you come into my office and threaten me in such a manner!” He thundered, reaching for the telephone on his desk. “I’m calling security right!”
“If you touch that phone, I will tear your fingers off, one by one, and feed them to you,” she growled.
Howard blanched and drew his hand back as if the receiver had transformed into a rattlesnake. “What do you want from me?” he asked sullenly.
“I want address of Morgan’s lair and the name he’s using to operate in this city.” When the realtor remained silent, she sighed impatiently and re-crossed her legs. “Mr. Howard, you know what I am. You know what I am capable of. I could pop your memory open like a raw cauliflower and get the information I need that way. But such a drastic measure would lower your IQ by more than fifty points. It’s up to you whether or not you end up reduced to a drooling imbecile.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” Howard insisted.
“Can’t?” Palmer prodded. “Or won’t?”
Howard pulled a monogrammed silk handkerchief from his breast pocket with
trembling hands and mopped his forehead. “He’ll kill me if I say anything.”
“And I will kill you if you don’t, Mr. Howard,” Sonja Blue replied icily.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of beef you have with Morgan, but I haven’t done anything—”
“You traffic with monsters, Mr. Howard,” she said, her voice as sharp and cold as a guillotine blade. “Four hundred years ago you would have ended up in the hands of the Inquisition, your feet stuffed into iron boots filled with molten lead. I am far more reasonable than Torquemada, if not as patient. What is your connection to Morgan?”
“N-nothing important,” he stammered.
“Mr. Howard, Morgan would not bother to become involved with a dreary little human such as yourself unless you served some purpose useful to him.”
“Look, he gives me money and I buy and manage properties for him. Nothing illegal about that.”
“Indeed.”
“I also find places for him in the city. He moves around a lot, okay? Never stays anywhere more than a few months. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“No. Nothing at all,” she agreed quietly, apparently lost in thought.
“Sonja?” The man called Palmer was holding aloft a fat manila folder. When Howard saw it he felt his guts knot into a sheepshank.
She took the file and began flipping through the documents inside, occasionally looking up to regard Howard with that impassive, mirrored gaze. Howard patted his forehead with his damp handkerchief.
“Things are starting to make sense,” she said, handing the folder back to Palmer, returning her full attention to Howard. “All of those properties are in the worst parts of Oakland. They’re the one you purchased and manage for your partner?”
“Look, I can explain—”
“I’m sure you can, but you needn’t bother. I know that not all vampires are bloodsuckers. The ones as old and as powerful as Morgan prefer to feed on human despair, hate and anger. And what better breeding ground than some festering hellhole of a slum, where rats bite babies, old women are murdered for their Social Security, and addiction is a way of life?” She smacked her lips and patted her belly in a broad parody of hunger. “That’s good eating!”
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