Darkest Heart (24 page)

"It has been a long time since I've looked upon another being, human or not, and felt the thrill of danger.

When I gaze upon you, I feel the rush of dread that comes with knowing I am in the presence of something capable of destroying me. It has been decades since I was in the presence of such a force."

I raise my hands to stay the words flowing from him. "Wait, let me guess: You want me to join you as your lieutenant, slaying rival vampires in exchange for leaving your family alone."

Noir laughs so hard I think his dreadlocks are going to come loose. "My sweet Satan, no! You don't understand at all! I'm not interested in your joining me, my dear. I want you to hunt me!"

"You want me to what?" I have to admit he's caught me; I honestly can't believe what I'm hearing.

"When you have existed as long as I have, things become boring and predictable. There are no risks anymore, and I have become far too comfortable in my routine. Every night I fight off the creeping death-from-within that is the Ennui. I never thought I would come to miss the Inquisition," he said with a sigh.

"Ever since the witch finders elite disbanded, it has all been downhill. There is nothing to challenge me. I am in danger of becoming old and foolish, like the museum pieces of the Ruling Class. I need someone to keep me on my toes! And I have decided that you, my lovely, are the challenge I need."

"And what if I refuse to accommodate you?"

Noir smiles at me with only half his face. The result is disconcerting. "That's why I have taken steps to make sure you will be more than eager to pursue me to the ends of the earth."

I get a cold, hard feeling in my chest, as if I've just swallowed an ice cube. "What have you done with Estes - ?"

"As I said, he's keeping company with Lady Madonna. But as to his being in capable hands - well, when it comes to Lady Madonna, she's capable of just about anything!"

I leap onto the runway, switchblade in hand. I want to rip the smirking bastard's dreads off and use them for a mop. "If you've hurt him, so help me - "

The strega raises his left hand and says something in a language I don't recognize but don't like the sound of. Then there's a strange pulling sensation in my chest, as if my heart is a toy balloon and someone's yanking on its string. The palms of my hands are damp; I glance down and see blood rising from the pores of my skin like sweat on a summer's day. I blink in astonishment, my vision abruptly turning scarlet as tears of blood well from the corners of my eyes. My ears also fill with blood, muting my hearing as if I'd suddenly stuck my head in a bucket of water. I open my mouth and crimson vomit gushes forth. I'm hemorrhaging as if I've been stricken with instant Ebola. Too weak to stand, I drop to my knees, my eyes rolling back in my skull.

There's a thick, cloying smell of spoiled fruit, of decomposition on a grand scale, and the empty air about me fills with waxen faces, gray as bled-out meat, their glazed eyes beyond all hope and prayer. Some of the faces seem to be exulting, others appear to be in horrible pain, and all of them are dead. These are the souls of those refused access to heaven or hell, condemned to wander the path that leads to neither salvation or damnation, their wails of despair unheard, their misery unseen by all - save for the dying.

I know that if I'm to survive the blood wizard's assault, I have to reach within and call upon the one thing I fear above all else. I have to free that part of me I've worked so hard to master, the living darkness I call the Other.

I close my eyes, sending tears of blood down my cheeks, and turn my focus inward. I drop through a hole in the back of my brain, where it lies in wait, like a trapdoor spider. In a blinding brilliance that is not light, in howling quiet, I hear it breathe and feel its fetid exhalation upon my soul. The choking, acid stench of insanity tells me that I am no longer alone - the Other is in attendance.

You need my help. Again, it whispers in a viscous murmur.

"Yes." There's no lying to the creature before me, as much as I fear and loathe it. The Other knows me far better than any lover ever could.

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) It turns its face to me, its naked body glowing with unadulterated hatred. What do I get out of it?

"You get to keep existing."

Not enough.

I've learned it's better to barter with the thing than to deny it. By ignoring the Other's urges, I only make it angry, which prompts it to fight for control of the body that we share.

"You get a kill."

Still not enough.

"Two, then."

It's a deal, it says, smiling in horrible complicity.

I can feel the Other rising from the depths, like a great white drawn to the surface by the splashing of an unwary swimmer. And, God help me, my fear melts away and becomes exhilaration.

The Other tosses back its head and laughs in celebration of its release, shaking itself like a dog, sending droplets of blood flying in all directions. Noir frowns and takes a step back, sensing some sort of transformation has occurred. The Other opens its arms wide, as if greeting a long-lost fellow, and smiles through the gore caking its face.

"So, you want to play rough, huh?"

The Other reaches into its deep, black well of power and roars like a pride of lions, shaking the very foundation of Dolly Dagger's with its ecstatic fury. Noir staggers backward, clapping his hands to his ears.

The Other continues to advance, purple-black energy crackling about its head like a rotten halo. Its smile widens and becomes a rictus-like grin, displaying every tooth in its head. It grabs Noir with its mind, digging invisible talons deep into the strega's psyche.

Noir howls like a wounded animal, dropping his walking stick as he falls to his knees, blood seeping from his nostrils. Even as he writhes in pain, a look of delight crosses his face.

"You are worthier than I ever dared dream possible!" he gasps, wiping the blood from his upper lip. "This is going to be so much fun!"

The blood-wizard gestures with his right hand, and a curtain of shadow drops between the Other and its prey. The darkness pours itself across the room, leaving only an empty stage in its wake. The Other snarls in frustrated anger and claws at the fleeing shadow, but its talons connect only with thin air. Noir's laughter rings out from nowhere and everywhere at once, his challenge echoing throughout the deserted club.

"Catch me if you caaan! Oh, and by the way - I left a little something for you in the storeroom!"

The door leading to the basement was behind the bar. As she stood on the threshold, looking down into the gloom at the foot of the stairs, she spotted a pair of legs sticking out from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, the booted feet tightly bound with a length of clothesline. The sight was enough for Sonja to push herself back into the driver's seat.

"Jack!" she shouted, trying to keep the panic from her voice.

There was a low, throaty moan, followed by the sound of an infant hungrily attacking a rubber nipple. The trussed legs jerked and trembled like those of a calf in a slaughterhouse. Sonja vaulted over the stair railing, sending the makeshift screen flying with a single kick.

Estes lay on his back, eyes rolled back in their sockets, helpless to defend himself against the hideous mockery battened onto his exposed throat. An umbilical cord trailed like a hank of slimy yarn from the vampire-child's beet colored body, connecting it to the prone figure of Lady Madonna, who lay with her legs spread wide, moaning in an obscene parody of orgasm.

As Sonja watched in horror, a clot of stolen blood slowly pulsed its way up the cord and disappeared between Lady Madonna's thighs.

Disturbed by the intrusion, the fetus raised its oversized head and hissed at Sonja like a feral kitten defending a saucer of milk. Its face was transparent and pink, like a mask made of pig's intestines engorged with blood. Nausea rose in Sonja's throat like floodwater.

Abomination! The Other's voice shrieked within Sonja's head, its revulsion and horror even greater than her own. Let me destroy it now!

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) The Other's rage spread through Sonja like a high fever, licking the inside of her skull with tongues of fire. The hatred the approximation of a child triggered in the Other was as basic and instinctual to the enkidu as the fear of snakes is to humans. She could not have turned aside its murderous fury, even if she had wanted to; fighting the Other when it felt itself threatened was as futile as it was dangerous.

Lady Madonna struggled to sit up, groggy as a junkie on the nod. "What - what do you think you're doing

- ?" she thickly slurred.

The Other brought a boot down on the narrow cord of tissue connecting Lady Madonna to her child-parasite. The fetus squealed angrily and flopped around like a gigged frog, impotently clawing the air as its attacker sliced its lifeline with the switchblade. A spurt of fresh blood - Estes' stolen life force - gushed forth from the severed umbilicus.

The screams from the fetus grew frantic as its skin dissolved into a red jelly and its eyes spurted from their sockets in soft, warm globs. Blinded, dripping melting flesh like wax from a candle, it crawled back to its mother-host, mewling like a lost kitten.

Lady Madonna, however, was no longer able to protect herself, much less her nightmare child. She writhed on the ground like a wounded snake as time, held so long at bay by her symbiotic relationship with her undead offspring, ravaged her body like a school of hungry piranha. Her breasts, swollen from decades of milk, withered into empty wineskins, while her belly deflated like a hot-air balloon.

"My baby!" Lady Madonna wailed, loose teeth falling from her aged gums. "You killed my baby!"

She lunged at the Other, her arthritic, liver-spotted hands hooked into impotent claws. The Other batted aside the crone with bemused contempt. "It was never a child. It was Abomination."

"He was the only thing I had! Now look at me!" She grabbed a snarled handful of gray hair, the heavily wrinkled, empty skin hanging from her upper arms in loose flaps. "You ruined everything, you goddamned oddling bitch!"

"There's nothing sadder than an orphaned renfield," the Other said, clucking its tongue. "You're better off joining your master." Placing one hand on Lady Madonna's shoulder, as if offering comfort, the Other drove the open switchblade through her withered breast.

Lady Madonna clutched at the Other's fist, trying to peel its fingers away from the knife hilt. The Other pulled the blade free and Lady Madonna dropped back onto the floor, as boneless as water.

"That's your second kill," Sonja whispered hoarsely as she reasserted her autonomy over their shared flesh. "Now go away."

You know as well as I do I can't go away. I can only go back, the Other said with a malicious sneer. You'll call on me again, of that I have no doubt. You need me, sister. You need me more than you ever will need anyone else. With that, the Other folded its malignancy about itself, like a bat wrapping itself in its wings, and dropped down the hole in the back of Sonja's brain.

The relief Sonja felt upon the Other's departure was short-lived. She knelt beside Estes. She had not allowed herself to really look at him until then, and she didn't like what she saw. His color was not good and he was far too still as she removed the ropes from his hands and feet. As Sonja pressed her fingers against the bruising around the tiny puncture wounds on his jugular, a clear, yellowish fluid, similar to snake venom, oozed forth.

She took one of his hands in her own, only to find it as limp as an empty glove. It was as if he had collapsed into himself, like a straw effigy left out in the rain. His skin, already pale, had become as translucent as opal, causing the veins of his face and hands to stand out like nests of snakes. A hard, cold lump filled the pit of her stomach, as if she had swallowed a lead sinker.

"Jack! Wake up!"

After a long moment his lids trembled and lifted, revealing eyes that shimmered like spectral lakes.

"Sonja..." His voice was vague and distant, as if dulled by morphine. He was greatly diminished, as if taken apart and then poorly reassembled. "It... it was so small... it fed... for hours...."

Sonja's lungs filled with a dread as thick and cold as mud, but she forced herself to smile. "I'm sorry it took so long to reach you. You're safe now. I killed it."

"My mother - ?"

"I took care of her."

"Thank... you." His eyes moved restlessly, like those of a caged monkey. "Noir? Is he - ?"

"He's dead," she replied, a little too quickly.

Estes frowned at her like a judge studying a suspicious witness. The shame crowding Sonja's throat

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) became so great she had to look away.

"You're... lying."

She nodded, unable to meet his eyes. "He used his magic to escape. Took his damned ogre with him.

Fuckin' blood-wizard."

"It's not... your fault..." he rasped, his voice as fragile as a moth's wing. "I'm the one... who failed...."

"That's bullshit, Jack."

"I failed... my father... and myself.... Sonja... please... I need you... to do... one last thing...."

Sonja could see he was headed, and she didn't want to go there. "No. It's not going to come to that, Jack."

"You're... lying to me... again.... I can feel... my life running out... it's too late for me...."

"You're going to be okay."

"No... no, I'm not... you know what to do... don't let me... become one of them...."

Sonja looked into his eyes and felt death's presence nearby, invisible yet real, like the oxygen in the air between them.

"I think I love you, Jack." The words slipped out with surprising ease. Estes' lips twisted into something that was supposed to be a smile, but looked more like a grimace.

"I... think... I loved you, too...."