Darkest Heart (11 page)

"I even taught myself metallurgy, since silver bullets and silver-edged weaponry are not mass-produced. I turned myself into a weapon dedicated to eradicating the loathsome monsters that prey upon the human race. I shall not rest until I have brought down the monster who destroyed my family, this I swore on my father's grave."

Sonja sighed and shook her head. "That was real, um, dramatic of you. But at least I know where you're coming from. But what do you want from me?"

"I want you to help me find the vampire who killed my father."

"Uh-uh! No way!" She shook her head vigorously, holding her hands up as if fending off a crushing weight.

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"You've been hunting these creatures far longer than I have, and it's clear you know them on a entirely different level than I do. Surely you must know something about him...."

"How can I help you when I've never heard of this `Blackheart' in the first place? And even if I did know anything as to his whereabouts, I still wouldn't tell you! Has nothing I've said gotten through to you?

You're on a suicide mission, buddy! You're young; you still have years ahead of you. Quit this madness, try to forget the monsters, and find yourself a nice young woman, or man, if that's your fancy, and settle down and live your life. God knows I would do it in an instant if I could, but that option was taken away from me a very long time ago."

Estes' eyes grew as dark as a storm cloud and he spoke with the curt, clipped tones of the indignant. "I thought, being a fellow vampire hunter, you would be willing to extend me professional courtesy. Now I see I was wrong to rely on anyone but myself in this matter. So long, Ms. Blue."

Sonja watched Estes turn sharply on his heel and stride off into the darkness, his duster billowing out behind him like a pair of bat wings. The man was clearly unstable - she could see it in his aura, which pulsed about his head like a magma pool. But there was no denying the attraction he held for her. She wondered if moths felt the same eager anticipation as they danced about the flame.

The lobby of the building is brightly lit, with marble floors and minimalist decor that manages to be upscale and sterile at the same time. It's one in a chain of extended-stay housing complexes that caters to Fortune 500 executives. Before I cross the threshold, I scan the corners for video cameras, spotting a small box just inside the front door aimed at the elevator bank. I step back and close my eyes, sending out a low-level telepathic signal tuned to a precise mental frequency in order to locate an individual, not unlike the echolocation used by bats to navigate their ways through caves. After a long second I receive the answer to my ping. He's on the penthouse floor.

I quickly withdraw the mind probe. Although I'm tempted to peek inside his mind to see what he has in store, I decide against it. While Estes might not be a natural-born sensitive, the drug and electroshock therapy he underwent as a teenager seems to have activated dormant esper talent. That would explain some of his success at spotting and hunting down his prey. Only poets, drunks and madmen can see into the Real World, and Jack Estes is certainly no Shelley.

I circle the building, checking to see if it has an exterior fire escape, but it's too new and too tall. I duck around back, scoping out the service entrance. I'm in luck. The security guard is seated on an upended plastic milk crate, quietly enjoying a blunt as he contemplates the early morning sky. I step out from behind the industrial-strength dumpster and move towards him, hands in my pockets. He lifts his head in surprise, his eyebrows rising quizzically. I reach inside his mind and massage the occipital lobe, effectively rendering myself invisible to his mortal eyes. With another mental shove he doesn't even register me lifting the plastic keycard off the clip on his belt. I stroll past him and into the nerve center of Estes' building. I head straight for the service elevators, which, unlike those open to the public, lack surveillance equipment.

The elevator doors open silently onto the penthouse foyer. Like the ground floor lobby, it manages to be tastefully appointed while betraying absolute no sign of individuality.

The double doors of the penthouse boast an electronic lock, and I slip the magnetic keycard into the slot.

The light atop the lock blinks red then turns green, and I push the door open. I stand in the doorway and smile humorlessly before taking a single, deliberate step forward.

I look about the cavernous living room with its luxurious carpets and expensive, modern furnishings.

Estes is nowhere to be seen. Everything is angles and highly glossed surfaces; designed to be looked at and never used. It is not a home, but merely a place to stay. I find it far too exposed for my tastes. I prefer keeping a low profile, and I usually doss down in raw industrial spaces, since I have little need for most human comforts.

I pause to inspect a wall-sized bookcase, only to find that the books aren't real - just spines pasted over two-by-fours.

My eye is drawn to the only sign of disarray in the entire room: a jumble of old vinyl forty-fives atop a stainless steel and glass coffee table. I pick up the first record, studying the logo dominating the left side

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) of the label: a line drawing of a heart pierced by a knife, the hilt to the right, and the blade to the left. I paw through the singles until I find another, earlier recording, with the name "Jack Music" printed in Art Nouveau script on the label. I put it aside and return my attention to the pierced heart logo. Something tells me that the symbol must hold some meaning to the vampire Estes called Blackheart. I carefully set aside the forty-five and resume my survey of the room. My gaze stops at the oaken doors at the far end of the room.

Upon entering the darkened room, I am instantly bathed in an artificial dawn. The light reveals a smallish antechamber lined floor-to-ceiling with full-length mirrors. I stand in the middle of the room, surrounded by my twins, shaking my head at his naiveté. Vampires avoid mirrors, not because they cast no reflection, but because they see their true selves. They see what they once were and what they have become.

Once, not too long ago, it used to frighten me to look at myself in the mirror. But I've learned to accept what I see. A multitude of Sonjas reach out in my direction, but all I touch is silvered glass.

I reach out and push one of the mirrors. A latch clicks and the camouflaged door swings inward. The bedroom is as sparsely furnished as the rest of the apartment: a king-sized mattress resting atop a walnut frame, with matching nightstand and dresser. At the foot of the bed is a stack of wooden cubes, piled one atop the other like children's blocks. As I move closer, I can see that the cubes are all painted black and have glass fronts, like shadow boxes. Inside each cube is a human skull with oversized canines. There are at least thirty cubes.

When he strikes, he's as silent as a cobra in the nursery, yet I can hear his rage and fear howling in the back of my head like an angry monkey. His obsession is so intense, so personal it threatens to overwhelm me with its stifling heat. I'm startled by its strength and its familiarity, as if accosted in a dark alley by an old acquaintance. I see the flash of the Bowie knife's silver blade in the corner of my eye. I turn and meet his upward thrust, my crossed hands forming a V to arrest the blow. I grab his wrist with my right hand, easily forcing it backwards. Estes' eyes grow wide, and he valiantly struggles to keep from crying out in pain.

"Let go of the knife." I try to keep my voice as even and unthreatening as the situation allows. "Let go or lose the hand."

His eyes flicker to my face, trying to decide if I mean what I say. The knife drops to the carpeted floor with a dull thump. I let go of his wrist and give the knife a solid kick that sends it flying into a far comer of the room. Estes stands and stares at me, massaging his bruised wrist, his confusion sounding like fuzz, tone feedback in my head.

"So," I say, as I finally turn to face the wall of shadow boxes. "This is your trophy collection, huh?"

Estes gestures at the boxes, his proud smile reflected and replicated in the glass panes. "I took a correspondence course in taxidermy." I nod but say nothing, trying not to betray my thoughts as I review the trophies on display. Most of the denuded skulls are those of adults, although I spot at least a couple juveniles amongst the spoils. But those two specimens are the least of my concerns.

Estes watches me intently, like a journeyman art collector eager to have his collection vetted by an expert.

I marvel at what would compel a man to place such grisly trinkets at the foot of his bed, so that they are the last things he saw before going to sleep and the first things that greeted him upon waking. "I take them with me wherever I go," he says, his eyes glinting like a bared blade. "They serve to remind me that the evil I fight against is mortal, in its way." He taps the glass of one of the boxes. "Recognize this one?"

I glance at the freshly peeled skull, the bone gleaming as white and smooth as a billiard ball. Carefully wrapped about the skull, like a python coiled about an idol, is a bright red braid.

"What do you think?" Estes asks, unable to keep the self-satisfaction from his voice.

"You need more help than you realize."

Estes' face falls like a cake. "What do you mean?"

"I'll admit you're good. Better than any man alive, I dare say. But that isn't enough. You've got to be the best if you want to stay alive long enough to nail the bastard who did your old man. The problem is you're human, Jack. You can't spot them every time, not the way I can." I tap the sunglasses covering my eyes.

"You think you know what to look for, but you don't see the big picture. You simply can't see it. I don't give a shit whether you believe me or not. After all, you're the one with the agenda. But I can tell you one thing..."

I punch out the glass on the third box from the left and remove the skull sealed inside, my fingers hooked into its eye sockets like a bowling ball. Estes puts ten feet between us, drawing his gun. I ignore the

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) muzzle pointed at my head and hold up the trophy.

"This one wasn't a vampire."

"That's bullshit! It's got fangs!" he retorts.

I take one of the over-pronounced canines between my thumb and forefinger and give it a hard twist. It snaps off in my hand, revealing a perfectly normal, human tooth underneath. "They're falsies, made from the same dental acrylic used for caps and crowns, the colors mixed to match the shade of the natural teeth, and cemented in place with the bonding agent that keeps movie stars' pearlies so white and even. If you'd just paid attention to the details when you were boiling this `trophy' of yours, you'd have realized this head belonged to some pathetic wannabe, not a vampire."

The sneer disappears from Estes' face and his hands begin to tremble. "You're lying." His voice sounds like he swallowed a bottlebrush.

"I wish I was," I reply, and, to my surprise, I really mean it. "But I'm giving you the straight shit, man. If you keep on this way, you'll be nothing more than a serial killer. Assuming you aren't one already."

"Get out," he snarls, staring down at his hands as if they were somehow blameless of the crime they have committed.

The moment the door closes behind me there is a shout of raw, animal pain, followed by the sharp crack of breaking glass. The shattering mounts, crash upon crash, until it grows into a final explosion, followed first by silence, then the sound of sobbing.

I pause, deciding whether I should simply go and leave this man to the hell he has built for himself. After a moment's hesitation, I reopen the door. Estes kneels amongst the ruins of his collection like a penitent, his bleeding hands clenched atop his thighs. My boot heels crunch through the shattered glass as if walking through sharp snow. He looks up at me, his eyes red and raw as wounds.

"Show me," he whispers, his voice reduced to a pained rasp. "Show me how to see."

My smile is that of a mentor who knows her pupil is destined for great things - and an early death.

According to the online booking agency, the next flight to New Orleans departed at five-thirty in the morning. Sonja grunted and pulled out a wallet full of credit cards, each with a different name on them.

After a moment's consideration she selected one and purchased two first class tickets.

"We better leave for the airport right now," she said, checking her watch. "We're cutting it close if we want to make the flight."

"But I'm not packed."

"You're dressed, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Then you're packed."

"What about weapons?"

She paused to think for a second, tapping her chin with a fingertip. "You're right. We'll need backup.

Better bring a few hundred rounds of ammo and another gun, besides the ones you're toting. Do you have a backpack?"

"How do plan to smuggle a backpack full of guns and ammo past the metal detectors?"

"Relax and leave everything to me."

They caught a cab and headed for the airport, suede backpack bulging with semi-automatic firearms, two hundred rounds of silver-jacketed ammo, a silver-edged machete, and a silver-bladed Bowie knife. Sonja stared out the window, silently watching the strip malls and used-car lots that lined the freeway go by.

As Estes paid off the cabbie, Sonja swung the backpack up onto her shoulders as if it held nothing more than a change of clothes and some cosmetics. "After we pick up the tickets, we head for the departure gate. When we hit the metal detectors, no matter what happens, act as if nothing is wrong and keep moving."

Since it was early, there was no line for tickets at the air carrier's front desk and they quickly headed in the direction of the departure gates. As they neared the x-ray conveyor and the metal-detector portal, Estes shot an anxious look at Sonja. She merely shrugged and motioned that he go first.