Darkest Heart (15 page)

"Who was that?" Estes whispered, eyeing the seraph's retreating back.

"Something I used to know."

"A friend?"

"No. But not exactly an enemy, either. It's too complicated to go into right now."

"That's alright. I don't think I could handle any more information tonight...."

Estes trails off, staring at a clutch of approaching tourists as if by sheer willpower he can somehow see beyond their cargo pants and divine whether they harbor monsters within. I can't decide whether the look in his eyes is suspicion or madness. Perhaps there's no difference.

And piss upon the stage

There's only one sure way

To bring the giant down

Defunct the strings

Of cemetery things

With one flat foot

On the devil's wings

Living Dead Girl,

- Rob Zombie

With its Kennedy-era strip malls, yuppie boutiques, and gentlemen's clubs, Atlanta's Cheshire Bridge Road presented an overall picture of prosperous, well-scrubbed depravity. The numerous strip joints,

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) triple-X boutiques and jack shacks that lined the busy street were nondescript ranch-style buildings lacking visible windows and with little to distinguish one establishment from another, save for their signage. In the case of Dolly Dagger's, the roof boasted a blood-red heart pierced by a glowing pink dagger.

"Are you sure this is the place?" Estes asked, squinting through the windshield at the stuttering neon.

"What did you expect? A gothic castle with a drawbridge and a giant spider's web spun across the entrance?"

Estes flinched. Although he tried hard to avoid looking foolish in Sonja's eyes, it seemed he managed to say something stupid every time he opened his mouth.

"Have you ever dealt with a brood before?"

Estes shifted uneasily. He could tell from her tone of voice that she was about to unveil another hither-to unseen portion of the world he thought he knew.

"What's a brood?" He didn't want to ask the question, but at the same time he knew he needed to know the answer. As much as these glimpses of what Sonja called the "Real World" intrigued him, they also made him extremely anxious. He had thought his view of the universe was jaundiced, but listening to Sonja made him feel like a sleepwalker wandering a minefield.

"They're a collection of undead Made by the same vampire. His posse, if you will. That's not counting whatever other hired muscle he might have working for him."

"Why would vampires need paid assassins?"

"I'm not talking thugs. Usually vampires as old and as powerful as this Noir have a couple of non-humans on the payroll, to provide back up in case of daylight attack. Mostly they use ogres."

Estes thought of the monstrosities he had glimpsed in New Orleans and did his best to suppress a shudder.

"What about werewolves?"

"What about them?"

"Don't they work for vampires as servants?"

Sonja made a snorting noise. "Vampires and werewolves get along about as well as lions and hyenas.

Vargr and enkidu are both very efficient predators of humans, which makes them rivals, not comrades in arms. But since our man's strega, there's no telling who or what he might have in his employ."

Estes frowned. "I thought you said he was a vampire."

"He is. But strega are a certain kind of vampire. I guess you could call them a subspecies. You see, most undead are created when a vampire drains a human enough to kill them. Vampires themselves call the process Making or being Made. But that's not the only way to become undead - it's merely the most common.

"Strega are those who've chosen to become vampires via damnation. They embrace the ways of the vampire while still alive, voluntarily surrendering their humanity by consuming human flesh and blood while observing necro mantic rituals involving the defilement and mutilation of innocents. Provided they haven't been decapitated or cremated before hand, strega rise three days after their mortal deaths.

"Gilles de Rais, also known as Bluebeard, was one such strega. So was the Countess Bathory. Dahmer would have become one, if the pathologists hadn't sliced his brain up like a deli platter. Strega are very powerful, because they're Made in no image but their own and so have no master they have to obey. Many of them also have unique abilities - ones your standard undead don't - such as a limited tolerance to sunlight and silver. It's even rumored the more powerful of them can use magic to cause their enemies to literally sweat blood.

"In any case, the differences between the damned and the undead are enough to keep them from trusting one another, which is saying something, given how the Ruling Class is constantly warring among itself.

As for me, the couple of strega I've run into over the years were extremely dangerous."

"Are you trying to scare me off?"

"I just want to make sure you're truly committed to going ahead with this plan of yours before we go wading in up to our hips."

He shifted in the car seat, clearly eager to get started. "Why shouldn't I be? After all, this is what I've spent my entire adult life working towards."

"I realize that," Sonja replied. "I just want to make sure you understand that once you enter the door of that club, there's no going back, mentally as well as physically."

"I understand."

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"Do you?" she sighed.

A block-shaped man dressed in a white linen suit and a black turtleneck stood at the entrance to Dolly Dagger's, collecting cover charge. The bouncer's skull was wide, flat and hairless, his lower jaw jutted forward like an ape's, and when he fixed his tiny, piggish eyes on Estes, the vampire hunter felt a chill travel up his spine and lodge itself in the back of his skull. It was a feeling he was quickly learning to associate with what Sonja called "Pretenders" - inhuman creatures that wore the semblance of men and women.

The bouncer glanced first at Estes, then at Sonja. "Twenty dollar you," he said in a thick, vaguely Slavic accent, stabbing a finger shaped like a Vienna sausage at Estes. "Woman no pay."

Estes dutifully peeled a twenty from the roll in his pocket. The bouncer snapped it up with surprising dexterity for someone with hands the size of a catcher's mitt. He grinned knowingly at Estes, flashing an array of inward curving yellow teeth, and motioned with his blunt head to the claret-colored curtains hung just inside the open door.

They pushed past the heavy velvet partition and entered a large, dark room that, except for a low stage that dominated the middle of the floor, looked no different from any other nightclub in the area. The dim, mirrored interior was lit by the footlights that ran along the runway and a collection of colored baby spots that hung from the exposed rafters like nesting bats.

On one side of the main room a deejay was simultaneously spinning CDs and working the lighting board from a raised booth. On the opposite side was a large, well-stocked bar.

"Gentlemen's clubs, adult entertainment centers, sports bars: I don't care what you call them. You've seen one titty bar; you've seen them all," Sonja muttered under her breath. "Still, I have to hand it to this Noir fellow for hitting on a perfect means of hiding in plain sight."

"Are you sure this is the place?" Estes asked as he scanned the tables and booths. "I don't see him anywhere."

"Oh, it's the place, alright. The ogre at the door is proof enough."

"So that's what he was," Estes said, genuine wonder in his voice. "I knew there was something not right about him."

"Good. You're picking up on the vibe. But don't get cocky. Ogres have the poorest camouflage skills of all the Pretending kind. That's why they hire themselves out as muscle."

Sonja turned her attention to Dolly Dagger's employees, peering over the tops of her glasses at the wait staff. "The aura on the deejay reads like a schizophrenic's MRI, but he's otherwise human," she said in a stage whisper. "Probably a renfield."

The ogre they had spotted at the door was now seated near the curtained-off VIP rooms reserved for private lap-dances, glowering at Sonja with imbecilic malice.

"You got any armor-piercing rounds in your little arsenal?" she asked, keeping her tone as casual as possible.

"No. Why do you ask?" Estes replied, startled by the question.

"Ogres don't possess significant psionic powers or magic, but they're incredibly strong and damn hard to kill. I know from personal experience their skin is as thick as rhino hide. I think you ought to be aware of that, in case you have to open fire to get out of here."

A dancer writhed on the stage to the accompaniment of overamplified, electronically enhanced music, spreading her legs so that the men assembled along the periphery of the stage could get a better look at her exposed sex. The Dagger's clientele largely consisted of unexceptional, middle-aged men wearing khakis and polo shirts and a splash too much aftershave. Although most of them were seated alone at the tables or in chairs that faced the runway, they did not look at each other as they drank their beers and mixed drinks.

Estes noticed a woman working the register behind the bar. Although her back was to the room, her face was reflected in the mirror, revealing her to be around thirty years old, with long, dark hair that fell in tangled curls like the mane of a wild pony, and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks. Compared to the outfits worn by the dancers, her loose-fitting smock and dark leggings were practically demure.

His attention returned to the woman on the stage, who was now easing herself up and down one of the brass poles. She was young, with long blonde hair the color of raw honey and creamy white skin as smooth as marble. Estes felt an ache building in his groin and tried to look away, but his eyes were drawn

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) once more in her direction.

He had spent his adult life in pursuit of creatures that exploited human weakness to their own ends. Lust, sex, need - those were the most potent weapons in the enemy's arsenal. Although he knew more than any other man alive the horror that might lurk behind the mask of beauty, he found it impossible to take his eyes off the dancer on the stage.

As Sonja moved towards the bar, the woman at the register turned and faced the room, planting her hands in the small of her back to ease the weight placed on her spine by her swollen belly.

Sonja halted in mid-stride, taken aback by the sight of the heavily pregnant bartender. Vampires detest expectant women nearly as much as they do sunlight and silver. So why in hell was one doing working at Dolly Dagger's? She dropped her vision back into the occult spectrum, but the bartender still came up clean. Whatever else she might be, at least she was human....

Estes watched as one of the dancer's admirers placed a dollar bill on the edge of the stage. The dancer swung her head in time to the music, allowing him to catch a fleeting glimpse of her face before her hair obscured it once again. Although he did not quite recognize her, there was definitely something familiar about the woman on the stage. Estes stepped closer to the runway, hoping to get a better look as the dancer slithered her way towards the proffered bill.

The man who placed the money on the stage leaned forward in his seat, his eyes burning with a lust that seemed inappropriate from someone dressed in Dockers. The blonde stooped to pick up the money and stroked her admirer's face with her free hand, then carefully folded the dollar bill and inserted it between his lips and slowly pulled it out with her mouth. Her admirer stared up at her, his forehead dripping beads of sweat as if stricken by a sudden bout of malaria.

Sonja experienced a small stab of alarm as she turned to speak to Estes, only to find him standing at the foot of the runway, staring up at the dancer gyrating on the stage the same way a starving man looks at Tbone steak. She is surprised by the jealousy his attention to the dancer sparked within her, and quickly pushed it out of her mind.

The dancer laughed and tossed her head back in amusement. As she turned in Estes' direction, he was finally able to get an unobstructed view of her face.... Sonja sighed and massaged her temples as an ashen-faced Estes turned on his heel and fled the club. She had suspected this might happen, although not so soon. She gave the dancer on the stage a final, disparaging glance before following her traveling companion outside.

Estes looked a lot like his mother.

Estes felt dizzy and the world kept tilting under his feet, so he leaned against the rental car and vomited onto the asphalt. He visibly started as Sonja appeared at his elbow. Although he knew she was inhumanly quick, he cursed himself for leaving himself so open.

"You okay?"

Estes nodded, wiping the bile from his lips with a trembling hand. "That dancer. The one on stage.

She's..."

"Your mother," Sonja finished the sentence bluntly, but not without sympathy. "I thought she might be here."

Estes laughed, but it came out with a painful, choking sound. "I don't know why I'm so surprised. The last time I saw her she was with Noir. It just never occurred to me she would be... she would be..." He tried to say the words, but they would not come out of his mouth.

"One of them?" Sonja finished the sentence, speaking the words he could not.

He nodded gratefully and looked away.

Sonja leaned on the hood of the rental car, folding her arms across her chest. "Look, kid, I told you there was no going back once we stepped inside that club, but that's not exactly true. Granted, there's no way you can forget what you saw tonight. But you can still hand it over to me to finish. There's no disgrace in that. I'll bring you the bastard's head on a platter, if that's what you want." Estes shook his head, shame spreading across his neck and shoulders like hot oil.