“Shut up!”
“Make me!”
“Damn you, Sonja!”!
The Other’s blood-smeared face split into a wide, sharp grin. “Wrong again.”
Sonja’s fangs sliced into her lower lip as she dragged the switchblade out of the fireplace embers. She could feel the blisters rise in the palm of her hand and hear her skin sizzle as she wrapped her fingers around its white-hot hilt. As she turned back to face Morgan, she saw his eyes drop back down, like the reels in a slot machine, shining with rage. With a roar of anger, he lunged, grabbing at her legs, and the façade of sophisticated gentility dissolved entirely, leaving only the snarling, rotting monster.
She struck at him blindly, more to force him into letting go than to try and kill him. The searing blade sliced through the corrupted flesh of his face like a hot knife through butter. Morgan shot to his feet. “Poison! Poison!” he screamed, his voice sounding like that of an old woman. The edges of the wound were already turning black and withering away from contact with the silver. “Unclean! Unclean!” he wailed, his voice cracking as it climbed the register. He clawed at the rapidly necrotizing tissue, desperately trying to keep the taint from spreading to the rest of his body. A thick, yellowish fluid welled up from between his fingers.
As Sonja staggered to her feet, her muscles shrieking as circulation was restored, she realized for the first time that the room was rapidly filling with smoke. She attempted another lunge toward Morgan, only to see Nasakenai emerge from the choking fog and hurry his master out of the room. Morgan was escaping. She had to stop him. Kill him. Get it over with, once and for all. She tried to follow him, but quickly lost track of them in the chaos. Her head ached horribly and her eyes burned as if someone had rubbed hot ashes in them—then she realized the air surrounding her was filled with soot and swirling cinders. She took a few steps in the general direction of the door, only to drop to her knees, gagging on the smoke. As her body was wracked by a coughing fit, it suddenly occurred to her how quiet it was inside her head. The Other’s needling voice, her unwanted, constant companion for decades, was strangely silent. She moved cautiously, as if probing a sore tooth with her tongue. Could it be that Morgan had somehow managed to destroy it?
No such luck, the Other whispered, its voice weaker than it had been in years. Don’t forget: you owe me one.
Sonja dragged herself to her feet, coughing violently as she struggled to pull oxygen from the smoke-filled room. She staggered into the hallway, now almost obscured by billowing smoke. She could hear the roar of fire and the laughter of children. The house shook like a dog shaking itself dry as Ghost Trap’s west wing collapsed into its cellar, knocking her to the floor. She lay there, dazed, wondering whether she would suffocate or burn to death first. The sound of laughing children grew louder.
A boy and girl, dressed in a sailor’s suit and a pinafore, emerged from the swirling smoke. She could hear the children’s long-dead, insectile voices buzzing in her ear, but could not make out what they were saying. The Seward children grabbed her by the hands and lifted her from the floor as if she weighed nothing, leading her through smoke-obscured rooms into a dark passage. Soon they were back within the tortured architecture of Ghost Trap’s outer house. As the Seward children hurried her through a series of hidden passages and interconnected rooms, Sonja was only dimly aware that her feet were no longer touching the floor.
Suddenly there was a desperate banshee wail, and their way was blocked by a hulking grotesque with two heads. The ghost-children deftly yanked their dazed charge out of the path of a large, blood-spattered ax, which bit deep into the floorboards. The gibbering, two-headed creature wrenched its weapon free from the splintered wood and lifted it aloft, only to freeze upon hearing the sound of a woman’s laughter—light, merry, free—echoing through the empty rooms. The creature paused to listen, its twisted, bat-snouted face grimacing.
Mrs. Seward’s ghost materialized beside that of her killer, grabbing the smaller of the two heads by its hair. The larger, deformed head squealed like a frightened piglet as she began to pull, flailing ineffectively at its attacker with its ax-hand. There was a muffled, sucking sound, like someone pulling a boot free of thick mud, as the shoulders and torso of the late Creighton Seward emerged from the apparition’s leprous skin.
The deformed head shrieked even louder than before, its clawed feet drumming against the bare boards like a petulant child throwing a tantrum, but to no avail: Mrs. Seward was not to be denied the reclamation of her husband. With a final, mighty tug, Seward’s naked body was freed from that of its demonic twin. The dead man shivered like a newborn foal and threw his arms around his murdered wife, his face pressed against her bosom. Robbed of its unwilling host, the parasitic demon collapsed like a gutted scarecrow, its corpus returning to formless ectoplasm.
Sonja stared at the embracing couple, reunited for the first time since that horrible night in 1907, when Creighton Seward, in a moment of weakness, made an unwise bargain in a bid for artistic genius.
Mrs. Seward, her face no longer bearing the horrific mark of her mutilation, then rose and wrapped her spectral arms about Sonja, brushing her translucent lips against her cheek as she enveloped her.
Suddenly Sonja found herself hurtling through room after room as if shot from a cannon, surrounded on all sides by crashing walls and collapsing floors as Ghost Trap’s unhallowed architecture collapsed in upon itself. She saw the stained glass window a split second before she was catapulted through it, and sent sailing through the air to land in the tangled, thorny embrace of an overgrown rosebush.
Dazed and badly stunned, Sonja heard yet another of Ghost Trap’s chimneys tumble down onto the ground next to her in a thunderclap of bricks. She realized she was in extreme danger of the exterior wall collapsing on top of her if she did not move, but could not find it in her to care. Morgan had escaped. After all those years spent tracking him, she had finally had him where she wanted him only to have him escape. She’d been so close, only to fail at her ultimate goal. Anise and Fell were dead; Morgan had disappeared into the shadows once more. Who cared whether she lived or died—or
Would even notice?
Suddenly a shadowy figure loomed over her, filling her vision. “Sonja! Thank God you’re alive!”
She squinted up at the figure bending over her. His face was smeared with soot, he reeked of smoke, and he looked like someone had whacked him in the head with a golf club. She thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life.
“Palmer?”
“It ain’t the Easter Bunny, baby!” He laughed as he kissed her blood-smeared brow.
Once they were a safe distance away, they turned to watch the house death throes. “Look,” whispered Palmer, pointing at the smoke and sparks drifting heavenward.
Sonja watched as the pellucid outlines of the Seward family ascended the currents, followed by an equally pale and familiar figure with long, flowing hair. Accompanying them was the shade of a moon-faced man in a flapping white coat, holding a deformed infant cradled in his arms. Within seconds they were gone, lost among the smoke and soot and lightening sky.
“I guess I should ask you why you’re not on a plane to the Yucatan right now, but I’m not,” she said wearily, as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, Palmer. You up to driving back?”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to hoof it into town,” he replied, pointing to the few tons of fireplace that now covered both of their vehicles. “Maybe we can pick up a ride into San Francisco from there.”
She groaned and took his hand. “I guess we better start walkin’ then, huh?”
As they made their way down the driveway towards the county road that lead out of the valley, there came the crunch of tires on gravel. Sonja and Palmer turned in time to see vintage Rolls with heavily tinted windows bearing down on them, Nasakenai behind the wheel, one side of his head swaddled in sooty bandages. Without thinking, Palmer threw his arms around Sonj
a and dove into a nearby ditch as the Rolls rocketed past, spewing gravel in its wake.
Morgan lay curled like a fetus inside the trunk of the Rolls, wrapped in blankets against the rising sun. Although his face still burned, he was certain he’d removed the silver-tainted flesh before the toxin had reached his central nervous system. He touched his left cheek and moaned. It had been lifetimes since he’d last known true pain, the kind only immortal flesh is heir to. The realization that he’d been badly—and permanently—scarred both angered and shamed him. Wounds dealt by silver weapons never truly healed, and they always left ugly scars. But that was not the worst part.
Broken bones would mend, damaged organs regenerate and even severed limbs would, in time, return to their former state. But there would be no healing for the deepest and deadliest wound she’d inflicted on him, only a gradual spread of infection.
Lord Morgan, late of the Inquisition and the Gestapo, lay on the floor of his car and contemplated the dreadful sickness that humans called love.
Epilogue:
A man’s mind, stretched by new ideas, can never go back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Palmer was hammering together a wooden crate on the porch of his hacienda when the mailman blew his whistle.
“Tweet, Daddy! Tweet!” Lethe squealed, rounding the corner of the house as fast as her baggy diapers would allow. Judging from the dirty tablespoon she was waving, and her muddy Babar the Elephant shirt, she’d been digging up the back patio again.
“Whoa, droopy drawers!” Palmer laughed, catching the toddler in his outstretched arms and flipping her upside down. Lethe giggled and wriggled in his grip like a puppy. Not bad for a nine-month-old. “You know you’re not supposed to go near the road!”
Palmer deposited the child in the macramé hammock he kept strung on the porch and trotted down to the mailbox at the foot of the hill. A dark, ragged form emerged from the hacienda and joined Lethe in the hammock. The little girl’s giggles were soon joined by peals of crystal chimes and the yammering of dolphins.
Palmer made a mental note to take the Land Rover into the city and buy some fencing material. Although Lethe was advanced for her age, he still had problems with her wanting to run out onto the road every time the mailman made his rounds. That was because Lethe loved getting mail. He sorted through the letters as he walked back up to the house. Two were from boutiques in California and New York, placing orders for three more crates of Day of the Dead tableaux, stuffed toad Mariachi bands and hand painted papier-mâché carnival masks. There was also a package addressed to Lethe with a fistful of Asian stamps plastered across it, and a postcard from Sonja.
“Look, honey! Aunt Boo sent you a present!” Palmer said as he handed the package to his foster-daughter, who was curled up in the seraph’s lap like a kitten. Within seconds, the porch was littered with tatters of brown paper and Lethe was playing with a rag doll dressed in a red kimono, its dyed corn-silk hair pulled into an elaborate geisha’s coiffure.
Palmer glanced at the front of the picture postcard— a panoramic view of Tokyo’s Ginza district after dark—then flipped it over to read the message. There was no salutation or signature. There never were.
Still no sign of M. But I’m getting closer. The chimera is very excited. It smells its old master. The scar makes it harder for M to change identities. There are rumors of atrocities in Thailand. Hope to be home for Xmas. Miss you both.
Palmer looked up from the card to find the seraph staring at him with its pupil-less golden eyes.
“No news, Fido.” The seraph nodded, although Palmer had his doubts as to how much the creature understood. “Lethe, sweetie, why don’t you two go play on the patio? I’ve got work to do.”
Lethe nodded her tiny dark head, her golden eyes flashing in the afternoon light, and hopped out of the hammock, leading the grizzled seraph by the hand. Palmer smiled as the unlikely twosome, nut-brown nature-child and bedraggled street person, disappeared around the corner of the house, Fido shambling after Lethe like a trained bear.
Even after all these months, Palmer still had a hard time accepting it all. A year ago he was doomed to twenty-to-life sentence. Now he was an expatriate yanqui, making a decent living selling Mexican and Central American folk art to painfully chic boutiques and galleries north of the border. He’d also discovered, to his surprise, he was a damn good father.
Yeah, a lot of things can change in the space of a year, he mused, fingering his jade ear-plug.
Lethe had re-appeared a couple of weeks after he and Sonja had set up housekeeping in the Yucatan. One minute the patio had been empty, the next Lethe and the seraph he now called Fido were there. Although the baby was barely a month old, she was already crawling and babbling. When it became evident the seraph was not going to leave, Sonja decided it was time to continue on her hunt for Morgan. Palmer suspected the seraph made her nervous. As it was, it had taken him a few weeks to get used to the creature’s presence. But after he started calling it Fido, he began to relax.
Every so often Sonja would appear on the doorstep, unannounced but always welcome, loaded down with exotic toys for her “niece.” Although she adored Lethe, she could not tolerate being around Fido for more than a few days. During her brief visits, she and Palmer would lay curled together in the hammock and listen to the night birds call. In its own strange way, their relationship was idyllic.
The last time Sonja had come home she’d been amused to see the ritual tattoo on Palmer’s chest. “What’s this? Have you decided to go modern primitive on me?” she chuckled as she ran her hands over the raised markings covering his pectoral muscles.
“I decided to get a tattoo to hide the scar from my surgery,” he explained. “Besides, it matches the scars you leave on my back.”
She was silent for a long moment before she spoke again. “Do you still have the dreams about your past life?”
“Sometimes. They’ve gotten stronger since Lethe arrived.”
“So what is this tattoo supposed to represent?”
“The old Mayan guy who did it says it’s the seal of the Chan Balam, the Jaguar Lords.”
In the three months since that conversation he had acquired the ability to speak fluent Lancondoan, the tongue of the children of Quetzalcoatl, and that he had stopped smoking cigarettes in favor of the burrito-sized hallucinogenic cigars once favored by the Mayan wizard-kings. He wondered what Sonja would have to say about his new lower-lip plug.
Palmer resumed his work on the packing crate, pausing every now and again to sip from a pitcher of lemonade. From his vantage point on the porch, he saw a campesino trudging his way along the unpaved road that ran past the house. The peasant, dressed in the traditional loose-fitting white cotton pants and tunic, a machete hanging from his belt, was headed in the direction of the paved highway three miles away, where a rattle-trap bus carried locals into the city.
Palmer stiffened at the sight of the stranger. He scanned his thoughts and studied his aura for traces of Pretender taint. Luckily for the campesino, he was exactly what he looked like—a simple farmer on his way to town. He would live to ride the bus to Mérida. Palmer heaved a sigh of relief. He disliked killing, even Pretenders. But he knew he could not allow his vigilance to flag, even for a moment.
For as every good parent knows, the jungle is full of jaguars hungry for the blood of children.
Paint It Black
Originally published in 1995 as part of Midnight Blue: The Sonja Blue Chronicles (White Wolf Publishing)
This edition has been heavily revised and updated. It is the author’s preferred version.
For My Best Friend
Dave Ryan
1954–1992
“Smoke ’em if you got ’em”
Prelude
Particularly
When something like a dog is barking
When something like a goose is born a freak
When something like a fox is luminous
When something like a tortoise crystallizes
When something like a wolf slides by
All these things are harmful to the health of man
—Hagiwara Sakataro, Harmful Animals
Sonja Blue looked out across the predawn rooftops. Most of the buildings were still dark, save for scattered windows here and there that marked early risers and insomniacs. The moon was down, and the sun had yet to make its appearance, leaving the city to darkness deeper than midnight. It was time for the changing of the guard. She looked down on the streets from her perch and watched the night things begin their retreat. Not just prostitutes and drunkards and other so-called ‘night owls, but those things that shrink from the sun for fear of burning.
A succubus wearing the outward appearance of a crack whore was bartering with a drunken older man. The succubus lifted her head, nostrils flaring as she scented the coming dawn, and sped up the transaction. The older man seems pleased he was getting such a good deal on pussy as they staggered into the darkened alley. He won’t think it’s such a bargain when, in the middle of his cut-rate fuck, her body reveals razor-filled mouths in places he never dreamed of.
A pack of vargr made their way down a connecting side street, headed in the direction of the river front. The early hour and the accompanying darkness have made them brave enough to run in their true skins. They are young, at least by werewolf standards, and lope along, two abreast and three deep, almost on all fours. They snap and growl and bark at the shadows. Any human unlucky enough to encounter them might, at first glance, mistake them for a pack of feral dogs—until they stand up on their hind legs and bay to signal an attack.
After the werewolves passed by, a homeless man emerged from a piss-soaked doorway. He was dressed in rags, his feet encased in busted-out boots stuffed full of newspaper. She studied him closely, in case he was one of the seraphim in disguise. But after a closer inspection, she realized he was just another vagrant. He looked old, but it was hard to tell for sure because of the grime caking his hands and face. Not that it mattered. When you’re that down-and-out it’s all the same.
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