Divine Madness (17 page)

At dawn, Ninon finally pulled her Jeep over at the edge of some no-name pueblo and I did the same with my SUV. We had been traveling without headlights. Neither of us needed them.

She got out slowly and stretched. The rising sun made the dark of her eyes glow like fire as she walked toward me. Her walk was graceful, but I could sense that her muscles were tight. Mine were too. We’d been off-roading in vehicles with poor shocks. Still, I sensed that something else was bothering her. I hoped it wasn’t the first twinges of bloodlust.

We have free will to make the best of our situations as we travel through life, but the road we are given to travel is arranged by Fate. This one had been rough. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating—what a bitch Fate can be. And it frustrated me that there was nothing I could do to ease the path for either of us.

“Welcome to historic Purgatory. Tourists, the line forms on the right,” I muttered, getting out to do some stretching of my own as I glanced at the sun. It was coming up,
but slowly, as if the hand of some dark god were trying to push it back below the horizon so that there would be more time for the wicked to be about their business. Disturbed at the idea of any other gods getting involved with us, I looked away.

The town wasn’t an improvement of views. Purgatory was a good name. Except even Hell had rejected this place. It was dusty, forgotten, a no-man’s-land. Not even the scorpions were stirring. I’d never been in a place so dead, and I couldn’t see why Ninon had stopped here.

“All true, a horrible place—but it’s Saint Germain’s kind of place. I think it behooves us to stay here for a while and see what happens. Just leave the keys in the ignition.”

I didn’t argue. This seemed the kind of place one might want to leave quickly.

We walked. Slowly. It is hard to explain now why the abandoned pueblo was so sinister. Sure, the buildings hunched low to the ground, the edges worn away by the wind and the very adobe flaking away in leprous chunks, but so were many ghost towns and none had bothered me as this one did. Possibly it was the eerier silence there—not just the absence of people, but no cries from foraging birds, no yips from stray dogs. There was only this creepy breeze that brushed by like a stealthy cat and then moved on leaving dead calm behind.

Ninon picked a handful of debris at her feet and sniffed at the dried leaves and dirt.

“Hellebore, baneberry, belladonna…Yeah, he’s been here—grave-dowsing. He’s certainly improved on his father’s technique. Dippel used to dig at random. Saint Germain has learned how to use magic to cause mass exhumations. Look around for the cemetery. I think we’ll find it emptied.” She turned slowly, stopping to look out over the ghostly asphodels that ringed the town. Their gray petals were shivering though there was no wind that I could feel. Perhaps they were mourning their comrades who had fallen under our tires.

“Emptied? You mean…all of them?”

“Yes. He’s been raising the dead. Calling zombies. Unlike his father, he no longer has to dig them up to do the job. He’s found the way to bring the mountain to Mohammad.” She pointed. “Over there. See the toppled headstones? They are black because of lightning strikes. I guess we know what he was doing while we were playing with Smoking Mirror. Like this place wasn’t horrible enough already. I just hope he hasn’t been customizing.”

A horrible place,
Ninon called it. I thought she was being generous. There was more at work here than a lack of civic pride. Frankly, it looked like Hell had spilled its guts in the desert and then crawled away in shame. It smelled a bit that way too when the sneaky wind shifted to the west.

“Why?” I asked helplessly. “And if the dead aren’t in their graves, where are they?”

“He does it because he can. Because it’s quick and expedient, and sheer numbers can overwhelm even if individually they’re fairly useless because their brains have rotted.” She paused. “The dead could be anywhere. They prefer the dark but can move around in the sun—for a while. Keep an eye out.”

“I think I’ll keep two.” We began to stroll down the street. Like gunfighters, we kept to the middle and watched each door and window, expecting an ambush in spite of the utter quiet.

I wondered, with a sort of low-grade dread, did Saint Germain want to kill us because he believed it was necessary, expedient? If killing was the correct word. Or was Ninon right? Did a part of him just plain old enjoy it? He might. And as I knew from my own experience, that urge wasn’t necessarily his own fault. His humanity was withered. Parents can really warp their children, and a part of me felt pity for the child that had been raised by Ninon’s Dark Man. I knew that my compassion didn’t change what we had to do; I just felt like I should know this man before I helped kill him. Taking a life is personal. The why
of it should be examined. I had never subscribed to the old saying, Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.

I glanced at Ninon. Her thoughts were closed to me now. I wondered if I was equally opaque, or if she could read me if she chose to. There was a lot I didn’t know but felt I should. We were sort of kin now—though writing that makes me feel icky in an incestuous way.

I don’t know if you can understand. Sharing blood with someone doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and yet can mean everything. Ask anyone who has given birth, or, less happily, contracted AIDS. Blood counts. Certainly our little bonding ritual had made a tie more lasting than any social contract man ever drafted. Yet
bound
doesn’t mean loved or understood. Look at S.M. and my mother. We all shared a bond, but I did not love them. My biological father was dead—no longer a part of my world—but I still cared for him.

And Ninon. Well, hell. I wasn’t sure what I felt beyond intense attraction. One thing was certain—we had a relationship that was stronger, and that would in some form last longer, barring death by demon dismemberment, than any regular marriage.

Also, to use a clumsy metaphor, it was like I had walked through the first part of my life as a fixed telescope, seeing clearly enough but with only half the potential vision, and never able to turn away from my one view of the world. She had shown me how to be like binoculars that could turn in any direction. Linked to her, though briefly, I had witnessed vistas I had never suspected were there—some magnificent, some horrible—and I wanted that wider vision again so I could learn to fully see. Not exactly a Valentine motto. O, Love, wilt thou be my binoculars?

I cleared my throat.

“Yes?”

I’m a guy and therefore not big on talking about feelings. However, I am also a writer and understand the power of words. Words can take the strangest phenomenon
and make it into something manageable, understandable. If something can be explained, it can, usually be contained.

Ninon began to smile at my silence. God! She was beautiful in the full blaze of the rising sun.

“Go on—ask. It isn’t like you to be hesitant, Miguel.”

“We’re here to kill zombies?” I asked in lieu of what was really on my mind. It seemed best to sneak up slow on my other thoughts.

“Yes. We can’t let Saint Germain set up strongholds. He’ll be as bad as Smoking Mirror if we don’t stay on top of him. I just hope that the zombies are still here and haven’t been lured away.”

I held the real binoculars to my eyes and scanned the horizon. I didn’t need them but they gave me something to do besides ogle Ninon while we were waiting for whatever was going to happen. An inappropriate impulse, and I knew it. Just—she was so damned gorgeous.

Searching for distraction, I heard myself say: “You know, for years I thought that S.M. only went after me because I was Mamita’s son. Also because I was unfinished business. As far as I know, I am the only male vampire he has ever made. I’ve been hunting up old stones that tell his story and so far haven’t found a thing about him making male vampires.”

Ninon nodded.

“I’m not sure why he favors women, except that his priestesses can’t pass on the disease. I’ve thought sometimes that he had second thoughts about killing me because I have resisted making more vampires and therefore am no threat, but also because…” I tried to think how to put my thoughts into words. “I believe something has happened in the last few years, and he is holding me in reserve. Like banking your blood before an operation. Or finding an organ donor because you know down the road that you’ll be needing one.” I could feel Ninon staring at me. I didn’t need to look over to know she was appalled
but not disbelieving. This sounded a lot like what the Dark Man had done with her. Her understanding let me talk without guilt or shame.

“Are you an organ donor?” she asked, meaning a human organ donor. I knew what she was thinking because I’d already traveled this particular road of thought.

“No—and I’ve no intention of becoming one.” Not for a human and not for S.M.

“That’s good. Why take chances?”

I nodded. I didn’t give blood either. Whatever had infected me, was staying with me. Except for Ninon. She was my one exception, and I didn’t think there was any danger of her wanting to pass this disease on either. If anything, she was more repelled by it than I was, in spite of all evidence to the contrary. I had no illusions. She had asked for vampirism because it was expedient—she had changed me for that reason too—but she found what had been done to us morally reprehensible. She probably thought we were damned. I hadn’t a clue how to address this notion, or if I even should. I couldn’t really reassure her because she might be right.

“You don’t know for sure why the Dark Man let you live?”
Or why Saint Germain wants you dead so badly?
But I didn’t ask this last question out loud.

“He didn’t ‘let’ me live. At first, I was proof that his experiments had finally worked. But later…” I half expected her to say that Dippel had grown fond of her, or perhaps he saw her as a sort of Bride of Frankenstein for his son. Her next words surprised me. “Later, after he began to get crazy, he tried to seduce me and failed. In a rage, Dippel made an attempt to kill me—some sort of ritual to take back his power, I think. When that failed, he sent his son after me. The son-of-a-bitch almost got me too. I didn’t know who he was at the time, just an adviser at Court. And Saint Germain is so…beautiful. So charismatic.” She shook her head. “But the longer I looked into his eyes, the colder and more frightening he
seemed. He had me half-naked on a settee when I finally realized that he would prefer to fuck me,
then
kill me, but he would have been fine with doing it in reverse order so long as I eventually ended up dead.” She smiled a little. I could hear it in her voice when she said, “I jammed a hat pin into his heart. He was more surprised than hurt, but it gave me a chance to get away.”

The woman can chill my blood even when she excites me.

“You jammed a hat pin into his heart—and he wasn’t hurt?”

“Nope.
You
don’t have to worry about garden-variety stakes anymore either.” This time I lowered my binoculars to look at her. She went on, “Unless your heart or brain is burned, vaporized, or ripped from your body, you will not die. You might hurt a lot, but you’ll eventually recover.”

“Sounds great. So what’s the catch?”

“You sure you want all this now?”

“Yes.” I wanted to know what made us different from the zombies we were hunting.

Her face was serious, even grim. But I still wanted to kiss her, to tangle my hands in her hair.

“We suffer. Terribly. Every few decades your body is going to need a little lightning. If you don’t give it a shot of this ‘divine fire,’ old age will come on you with a vengeance. Any diseases you have will come back redoubled, and new ones can set in. We become the portrait of Dorian Grey. It happens fast, too—in me. Worse, it affects the brain as well as the body. However, I’ve known others who can wait months to get a tune-up once symptoms appear. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“But for you? How long do you have when this weakness sets in?” In other words, how long might I have before I had to find an electric chair of my own? She was probably right that this wasn’t the best moment for such questions, since my mental upholstery, though overstuffed, wasn’t exactly full of calm, rational thoughts and it would take little to tear open. Still, I felt compelled to
ask. Given our present activities, it wasn’t beyond the realm of the possible that we might not have another chance for a talk. I had to know what I was facing.

“How much time? Only weeks after the first symptom—and a shorter time each cycle. Or it was that way. I don’t know what the vampirism will do. I’m hoping it buys me more time. It isn’t always convenient to electrocute oneself.” She laughed. “You’d be surprised at how many places never have lightning storms. Or only get them at certain times of the year. I can draw the St. Elmo’s fire if there is a storm, but I can’t alter weather patterns.” She raised her binoculars. I didn’t think that she needed them, either, at least not to see. “I almost died during World War One. I was in Belgium and the only storms we had for weeks on end were German artillery. I was badly wounded. I thought for a time I might die, but that mercy was not granted me.”

“Can we die? I mean of disease or age?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.” She stiffened suddenly.

“What?” I asked. “Do you see something?”

“I smell something. I believe that Hell is empty and all the Devils are here,” she said, quoting
The Tempest.

“Devils?” I never knew when she was kidding.

“Zombies at the least. How unpleasant to be right about this,” she said, looking annoyed. She pulled her pistol from the small of her back and checked that it was loaded. Her hands didn’t tremble. This was good. We were almost twelve hours into her conversion, but she seemed to be exhibiting none of the symptoms that had plagued me. She wasn’t sweating blood and hadn’t mentioned any urge to tear my throat out or suck my brains. There was no sign of any stinger growing on her tongue—I’d checked a couple of hours ago when we stopped to eat and answer the call of nature. I felt fine too. If this deal of ours had consequences, they were being delayed.