Paint It Black, page 22
part #3 of Sonja Blue Series
Morgan struck again, hoping to plunge his fangs into the she-demon's naked thigh, but she moved too fast, slipping her noose about his neck and yanking it tight. Morgan hissed and flailed, his body lashing back and forth like a bullwhip.
"I have been a long time being born, sweet father," the voices chorused. "And birthing is hungry work. I would feed now."
The she-demon carefully laid aside her weapons while keeping a firm grip on the head of the giant cobra. Morgan shrieked and hissed and struggled with all his might, but there was no escaping the noose. The dark-skinned destroyer licked her lips with her long red tongue, her eyes gleaming like polished skulls, and sank her fangs into the back of her captive's neck with a satisfying crunch.
* * * * *
Any who might have seen them then would have mistaken them for lovers, locked in a passionate embrace. And, on some level, that would have been the truth. But if they looked closer, they would have seen the crackling sheath of purple-black energy that pulsed around the couple like St. Elmo's fire, and how the aura surrounding Morgan was beginning to stutter and pale, while Sonja's pulsed like a drum.
Sonja opened her eyes and found herself staring into the face of a dead thing. The illusion of life that Morgan had maintained for so many centuries had finally failed him. His skin was the color and texture of parchment. His once-dark hair was now white and patchy, like a dog with mange. His flesh had melted from his bones, leaving him little more than a dry husk, a pitiful scarecrow outfitted with fangs. Although he looked like an ancient mummy, his eyes still burned with stolen life.
"Enough," he wheezed. "Please-"
"No," she answered, her voice that of the black-skinned demon-goddess. "More. I need more. Give me the chimera. Give me your love."
Morgan raised a sticklike arm in a feeble attempt to stay her, but it did no good. Undeterred, Sonja sank her fangs into what was left of his throat. The vampire lord shrieked and dark fire burst from his eyes and ears as his brain spontaneously combusted. Sonja continued to feed, oblivious to how Morgan's limbs continued to wither and draw in on themselves, disappearing into sleeves and pantslegs. Only when there was no more to drain did she let him drop.
What was left of Morgan lay at her feet, surrounded by a mound of clothes. It looked something like a cross between a pickled monkey and a petrified fetus, the discolored skin pulled tight over brittle bones. Even though she had drained it of seven hundred and fifty-three years of stolen energy, the creature still clung to the pretense of life. It lifted its oversized head on its feeble stalk of a neck and looked around with blind eyes, its dry bones rattling like the limbs of a marionette.
"Forgive me," it piped.
She brought her bootheel down on its skull, shattering it like a lightbulb, and stepped over the pathetic remains of the thing that had created her and climbed onto the ledge of the observation deck. Her hands seethed with a black fire laced with tongues of crimson. The energy she had stolen from Morgan coursed through her veins, filling her with euphoria.
Her body vibrated like a tuning fork, juiced on the ultimate high - the life-force stolen from the undead. Morgan's power surged through her body, amplified by the negative energy that hung over the city like a pall of smoke. She reached out and recalled the madness that had shaken the city. The wind was so strong now that the television tower groaned to itself like an old man. She grinned and stretched her arms upward, as if to embrace the stars. And she stepped off the ledge into empty air.
She called the winds to her and they came, bearing her aloft as if she were a leaf. She giggled in delight, like a child on a rollercoaster, and opened her arms wide, spiraling high into the night sky. She sped along, oblivious to the dazed and frightened populace trembling naked and bleeding in the streets below her. Those forced from their homes by fire found themselves gathering in the open parks, awaiting the arrival of the sun. Those who dared look up saw the silhouette of a woman streak across the sky, then quickly looked away.
Sonja shot upward, higher than the tallest buildings, like a skydiver in reverse. She was so jazzed on the energy pulsing through her she didn't care where she was going or who saw her. After years of ignorance and fear, she now knew the truth. She knew who she was. What she was. Tonight the last step in her creation had been reached. Her evolution was complete. She was the Angry One. The Shatterer. She Who Cannot Be Turned Aside. She was the Ultimate Predator: the vampire who feeds on vampires.
The Nightmare Queen began to sing her victory song, banging her sword against her shield as she danced on the body of her defeated foe. The faster she danced, the more intense the black fire surrounding Sonja's flesh became. Her ears were filled with the sound of drums and the clashing of swords and the ringing of bells. Flushed with victory and the exhilaration of birth, the newborn Destroyer touched down atop the World Trade Center and roared a challenge to the world.
* * * * *
Deep within the bowels of the Black Grotto, Lady Nuit froze. The scalpel she'd been using to flay a stock analyst from Connecticut fell from her fingers and stuck, point-first, into the floor. The human chandeliers began to moan again.
"Shut those damned fools up!" Nuit snarled, her voice dipping lower as Luxor's features and testes slid from their hiding places. "I just got them to quiet down! I've had enough of their complaining tonight!"
"Yes, milord," said Jen, smiling behind his hand. "I'll see to it immediately."
* * * * *
The buzz wore off while she was out over the Atlantic Ocean. One minute she was filled with enough energy to pulverize continents, the next she was riding on fumes. The first thought that ran through her mind was: Wow, wotta rush!
The second was: What the fuck-? I can't fly!
She plummeted from the sky like Wile E. Coyote suddenly realizing he'd run out of cliff, falling a hundred feet before hitting the water. She couldn't even see the land.
Six hours later, a beachcomber on Coney Island stared in amazement as a woman clothed in a leather jacket, jeans, and boots staggered out of the surf, a length of seaweed wrapped around her neck like a Hawaiian lei. Before he could react to the strange sight, a man appeared from out of nowhere and threw a blanket over her, hurrying her off the beach.
WHEN THE DEAD RETURN
"From fairyland she must have come
Or else she is a mermaiden,"
Some said she was a ghoul, and some
A heathen goddess born again.
- John Davidson, "A Ballad of a Nun"
It didn't take the jungle long to reclaim the house.
The porch is alive with creepers and other blooming vines. The hammock I once shared with Palmer is now a mildewed, tattered mess, hanging from the hooks in the rafters like a monstrous spiderweb. A couple of empty Tecate bottles lying on their side amid the litter wink at me darkly in the afternoon sunlight.
The front door is unlocked but the frame is badly warped from the heat and humidity, making it somewhat difficult to open. I inadvertently yank it off its hinges when I try to open it. Inside the house smells of mold, rising damp, and rotten garbage. Small lizards skitter out from underfoot as I go from room to room. Some of the windows are broken, allowing leaves and other detritus access to the house, but it looks as if no one has set foot in it since I left, months before. I'm not really surprised. The locals are exceptionally superstitious about matters dealing with Señorita Azul.
I step out into the courtyard. It looks desolate, with dead leaves collecting in the corners and weeds poking their rough heads among the tiles. The fountain no longer burbles to itself and the stagnant water has grown a scum of algae.
The back of the house is even more overgrown than the front. The rapidly encroaching jungle has swallowed Lethe's old swingset and monkey bars. A wild she-boar and her piglets burst from cover at my approach, fleeing in the direction of the forest. I follow them, but not with the intention of hunting. The pig-path is still there, of course. It's been there for several hundred years, and it will be there for several hundred more. I climb to the top of the neighboring hill, where the ruins of the ancient Mayan observatory once stood. I dust off one of the tumbled limestone blocks and sit on it, lotus-fashion, and cast my mind into the jungle.
Hours later, as the sun begins to sink, I receive an answer to my summons in the form of a man emerging from the jungle.
He wears a jaguar skin draped over one shoulder and an unbleached linen loincloth. Jade earplugs stretch his lobes almost to his shoulders, and his lower lip boasts a similar ornament. Tattoos of Mayan sky-serpents and jaguar-gods swarm his naked torso and arms. His graying hair is pulled up into a warrior's topknot, adorned with the feathers of brightly colored parrots. In one hand he carries a machete, and across his back is slung an AK-47.
"Hello, Bill."
"I don't go by that name anymore," he replies. "I'm called Chan Balam now. Lord of Jaguars."
As he moves closer, I see that a disembodied hand rides his shoulder. It waggles two of its six fingers in my direction like antennae.
"I see you've still got Lefty with you."
Palmer allows himself to smile. "It would be hard to do without him. He's my good right hand. So to speak." The smile disappears as quickly as water on a hot griddle. "Why are you here, Sonja? Why did you come back?"
"Don't worry, I'm not here to try and force your return to my service, if that's what you're thinking. I just wanted to see you one last time, that's all. I wanted to tell you that everything's okay. I - I'm not the woman I once was.”
Palmer frowns and squints at me, looking for things only he might see. He nods, and some of the tension drains from his face. "You are different. You're more - I don't know - together. It's as if the Other no longer exists."
"Oh, she's still here," I laugh, thumping my chest. "Just as Denise is still here. I guess you could say we've reached an understanding. Hard as it might be to believe, the Other actually saved my ass. Kept me from doing something really stupid. We no longer war among ourselves. What about you? Are you happy with your new life?"
"I've founded a guerrilla group, of sorts, composed largely of campesinos of Mayan descent. The government ridicules us in the media, but they're scared. They hunt us like animals, but they've yet to catch us. We keep our supplies and weapons hidden in the sacred cenotes. I guess you could say it's a back-to-Queztalcoatl movement." He shakes his head and I glimpse some of the old Palmer, the one I used to know. "I'm a pragmatic man. A reasonable man. You know that. But I had a dream not too long ago, and in it I saw the world change. It was fierce and frightening, but not hopeless. It was as if the world was being reborn, not destroyed. All I want is for my people to prepare themselves for that day, away from the madness and ugliness of the world that now exists. Sonja - am I crazy?"
"No. Just prescient."
There is a movement in the trees behind Palmer, but he does not seem alarmed. He glances over his shoulder and nods, then turns back to me.
"I must go. Farewell, Sonja. Please don't misunderstand me when I tell you this - but I hope we never meet again."
As Palmer slips back among the trees, I glimpse the figure that waits for him in their shadows. It is the girl, Concha. As she turns to go, I can see her belly is swollen with life.
* * * * *
It is almost dark by the time I get back to the empty house. I pause for a second, then reenter the building. One last walk through, I tell herself. Just for old times' sake.
The bedroom I shared with Palmer smells like old jock straps. The sheets on the bed boast large blossoms of fungi. Rats and mice have chewed their way through Lethe's collection of stuffed animals. The kitchen reeks of rotten garbage and whatever was left in the refrigerator when Palmer moved out. Unopened invoices and bills of lading still sit atop the kitchen table. So does the black mask.
I pick up the mask and hold it so its impassive features are level with my own. Even though it has been left untouched for months, its surface still shines like a piece of polished onyx. I feel her presence before I see it, much the same way I'd been able to sense Morgan before he came into a room. Suddenly the darkened kitchen is filled with a golden light that pours in through the windows facing the courtyard.
(Auntie Blue.)
The voice in my head is Lethe's, but it isn't the voice of a child. Still holding the mask in one hand, I step out onto the patio, shielding my eyes against her brilliance with an upraised arm.
The light fades as if someone hit a dimmer switch, revealing a female figure at its heart. The woman is not the teenage beauty Palmer described to me, but a very, very old woman - her breasts hanging loose, her thighs and sex withered and wrinkled. I can hardly believe that this ancient crone is my three-year-old stepdaughter.
“Lethe?”
(Yes. I was Lethe.)
"What the hell happened to you?"
(I underwent a sea-change. As did yourself.)
"You know about-?"
(We are agents of change, you and I. True, we are fashioned for completely different tasks, but our goals are the same. You are the Destroyer, I am the Maker. You're the sickle, I am the seed.)
"That still doesn't explain why you're-"
(An old woman?)
"I wasn't going to be that blunt about it, but - well, yeah."
(Everything is creation and destruction. Death and rebirth. It has always been so. Such was the case before the rise of Man, before the reign of the great lizards and the Unnamed Ones before them. Things are built, things prosper, things are destroyed. And the time has come for things to change again.
(The last such change occurred several hundreds of thousands of years ago, when a particularly clever species of ape was given a boost up the evolutionary ladder. However, mankind was led into a blind alley. You see, in the beginning all humans possessed what is called "sixth sense." Over the millennia, they have lost their awareness of the Real World, since it was in the interest of the enkidu and the vargr and other Pretending Ones to manipulate the breeding stock to ensure that they would remain in control. But by doing this, the scales of Nature were thrown horribly awry.
(Once stripped of its awareness, Mankind became more of a danger than any Pretender ever dreamed. At first Mankind flourished. Then it metastasized. It grew like a cancer, stripping the earth for its needs, stoking the very fires of destruction. Born blind and deaf, it cannot see the damage it does, the harm it inflicts. And, with every generation, it waltzes closer and closer to the brink of extinction - and with it, the destruction of the Real World. The time has come for the game to be set aright.
(For too long the enkidu have preyed upon the hearts and minds of Man. It is time for the playing field to be leveled. It is fitting, in its way, that by tampering with a system already out of balance, Morgan's dream of shaping a race in his own image would result in my creation.
(The universe is Positive and Negative. Give and Take. Chaos and Order. If there is too much of one element, then the center can no longer hold. The Natural and Supernatural Worlds spawned us - the first of our kind - in an attempt to set things right. You are the Destroyer, the one who must prepare the way by slaying the demons that would challenge the race to come. You are the midwife to the rebirth, making sure the way will be clear. And I am the Creatrix, the Madonna, the Magna Mater - mother to the new flesh.
(I have mated with twenty-five men, all of whom possessed the ability to see beyond. And I have borne twenty-five sons. Unlike myself, they shall live a normal mortal span. Each shall have the inner sight, to varying degrees. Some will be powerful psychics, others will merely have a knack for finding other people's car keys. All of them, however, will be aware. And, thanks to genetics and charisma, all twenty-five shall be highly attractive - at least as far (i, the females of the species are concerned. Should all twenty-five of my sons succeed in spawning four times each - and I doubt that will be a problem for them - and their descendants do likewise, within ten generations there will be twenty-six million of them. By the thirteenth there will be over one billion. By the fifteenth generation Homo Sapiens will be no more - there will only be Homo Mirablis.)
"Twenty-five? And Palmer-?"
(His was the first of my sons. The child has been adopted by the British Home Secretary and shall grow up in the seat o f power.)
"You damn near broke Palmer's mind, using him for stud like that."
The old woman that had once been Lethe stares at me with flat, golden eyes as if I'd commented on the weather.
(His seed was needed.)
"Yeah, well, whatever."
(My time here is short. My corporeal self is deteriorating. Soon I will be without form, reduced to energy alone. I merely wished to see you-)
"For old times' sake?"
The old woman smiles, and for a second I glimpse my stepdaughter's face hidden within the sagging flesh and wrinkled skin. The light emanating from her begins to intensify, until she glows like a tiny star.
(They will need you to make them safe, as you made me safe. You are their midwife, as you were my own. Watch over my children, Sonja.)
"Like they were my own."
* * * * *
Jen yawns and stretches behind the wheel of the Land Rover as I climb back inside. "About bloody time! I thought you'd never get back!"
"I ran into some old friends."
"Anyone I might know, milady?"
"No. And stop calling me `milady.' My name's Sonja."
"As you wish, milady." Jen points to the mask I'm still holding in one hand. "What's that?"
I glanced down at the thing in my hands. The empty eyes stare up at me. I lift it to my face. The world I perceive from inside it is limited in its view and claustrophobic. I remove it then hurl it out the window.
"It's a mask. Something to hide behind and scare others with."
Jen turns the key in the ignition and the engine comes to life. "Where to next?"
I shrug and kick back in the passenger seat, resting my feet on the dash. "It's a big world out there, Jen. Surprise me."
