In the Blood (22 page)

"No, there's another way out. One that leads directly to the outside. I'm not
supposed to know about it."

"Good. If we leave now, we should still have another hour or two of sunlight in our
favor." Sonja shot a sharp look at Fell. "How about you? Are you coming with us?"

Fell opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head.

"I should kill you, you know."

He lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. "So why don't you?"

She didn't answer him. She was still puzzling over his question when Anise led her
out of the parlor and into the hallway.

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The heart of Ghost Trap, compared to its protective outer layers, was a large,
comfortable, Victorian mansion decorated with antiques. As far as Sonja could tell,
they were on the ground floor. It hardly looked like a vampire lord's sanctum
sanctorum.

Anise motioned to a small, narrow door set into the side of a staircase.

"This leads to an underground tunnel that connects the main house with what used
to be the stables. It's how Morgan and the renfields get in and out."

"What are you doing out of your room?"

Anise gasped and Sonja melted into the shadows. A stern-faced woman with the
characteristic wan complexion and pinched face of a renfield glowered
disapprovingly at Anise from the foot of the stairs.

"I was bored. I wanted to take a walk."

The renfield stepped forward. "You know you're not allowed to roam the house
unsupervised! Did Dr. Howell tell you to do this?" There was an edge in her voice
suggesting she would like nothing better than to accuse the good doctor of
malpractice.

"No one told me to do anything! I decided to go for a walk on my own."

The renfield blinked and frowned as if Anise had suddenly started speaking in
Swahili. "No one decides things for themselves. Who were you talking to?"

"I wasn't talking to anyone, just myself."

"You're a lying little shit." The renfield's lips peeled back, displaying a set of
tobacco-stained teeth.

Anise struck the renfield with her open hand. The blow knocked the woman to the
floor. The human supported herself on one forearm, the right side of her face
already swelling. She fixed hate-filled eyes on Anise and spat a mouthful of blood
and loose teeth.

"I don't care if you
are
his prize broodmare. I'll burn your brain for that!"

"I don't think so."

The renfield jerked her head in the direction of Sonja's voice just in time to catch a
steel-tipped boot under the chin. She fell back against the worn Oriental carpet, her
neck broken.

Anise stared at the dead woman. "You killed her!"

"Had to be done. Couldn't risk her raising the alarm."

Anise stared at her own hand, still smeared with the dead renfield's blood, then at
Sonja.

"C'mon. We're wasting time!" Sonja shouldered the renfield's body and opened the
door leading to the tunnel.

"You're taking her with us?" Anise looked genuinely repulsed.

"I've got to stash this stiff
somewhere,
don't I? We can't leave Little Miss Sunshine
here lying around for the housekeeper to stumble over."

Anise followed Sonja into the space under the stairs. They wedged the renfield's
corpse into a corner then descended a short, wooden stairway leading to a dark,
brick-lined tunnel. The place smelled of damp earth, spiders and rat piss. Neither
woman was bothered by the lack of light as they hurried along. At the end of the

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tunnel was a series of iron rungs leading to an overhead trapdoor. Sunlight filtered
around the cracks, illuminating fungus spores dancing lazily in the air.

"Okay, up you go, young mother."

Anise placed one hand on the bottom rung, looked up at the dim sunlight, then back
at Sonja. "What about Fell?"

"He had his chance."

"He doesn't understand, Sonja! It all happened so fast. He's still unaware of what's
really going on. He's scared of you. Maybe if I tried talking to him maybe then he'd
listen."

"Anise..."

"I didn't ask for this!" Her voice was both angry and frightened. She sounded like a
child trying to control her sense of grief and betrayal. "All I wanted was to be free of
the nightmares! To get rid of the red-eyed things in the dark! Now I wake up from
the dream and find myself still in the nightmare. Everything is upside down and
crazy. I'm pregnant and I don't... I don't like men, Sonja."

"I know." Her voice was soft, conciliatory.

"But still, Fell's the father of my child. I owe him something!"

"Anise, if you go back there, your chances of escape range from slim to none. How
are you going to get away? You're not going to get very far on foot."

"Honey, you don't grow up in East Oakland without learning how to boost a car."

Sonja contemplated knocking the pregnant woman unconscious and dragging her
back to the car, but cast the idea aside. "Okay. Go back and get him. We'll arrange
to rendezvous later this evening. There's a town nearby called El Pajaro. I'll be
checked into the motel there. Look for a rented Ford Escort. But I promise, Anise, if
you fall back under Morgan's control, I'll have no alternative than to kill both you
and your baby. Is that clear?"

Anise nodded. "It's been over one hundred and twenty-five years since the
Emancipation Proclamation. I have no intention to bring a child of mine into the
world as a slave."

"I better be going, then." Sonja paused, then flung her arms around Anise's
shoulders, dragging her into a hasty embrace.

Anise returned the hug and whispered, "God's speed, sister."

Anise watched Sonja climb into the sunlight then turned back into the darkness.

Sonja wanted to cry, but her eyes remained frustratingly dry.

The Pink Motel

No woman can call herself free who does not
own or control her body. No woman can

call
herself free until she can choose consciously
whether she will or will not be a

mother.

-Margaret Sanger

14

Palmer was well into his second pack of Shermans when Sonja reemerged from the

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undergrowth. He was surprised to find himself glad to see her.

He got up from where he'd been squatting in the shade, the binoculars' eyepieces
capped. He had stopped studying Ghost Trap shortly after Sonja entered the
building. He didn't like the reverberations the house kicked up in his hindbrain. He
grinned a welcome to his partner.

"It's about time you got back! I was starting to get worried. There's only an hour or
two before it gets dark. So, did you off the bastard?"

"Get in the car."

"You
did
kill him, didn't you? I mean, we're not going to have to worry about some
heavyweight bogeyman coming down on our asses, are we?"

"We'll talk about it later, Palmer."

His smile faltered. "You didn't do it."

"I said we'll talk about it later!"

Palmer ground out his smoldering cigarette with a sharp twist of his heel. "I should
have known," he muttered as he crawled behind the wheel. "I should have fuckin'

known."

The Pink Motel provided the only lodging in El Pajaro, a tiny hamlet of three
thousand souls. Palmer scowled at the sign fronting the parking lot-a Tinkerbelle
clone hovered over the garish tubing spelling out the motel's name. The glowing end
of the neon fairy's magic wand dotted the
i
in the word
pink.

He looked up as Sonja returned from the registration desk, sliding into the
passenger seat next to him. She held up a piece of pink plastic with a key dangling
from its end.

"Room Twenty. I told him we were a honeymooning couple and didn't want to
bother the other guests."

"No problem there," Palmer commented dryly, scanning the empty gravel parking
lot. He put the car into gear and drove to the end of the twenty-unit motor court.

The exterior of the long, L-shaped building was an aged pink stucco the color of
well-chewed bubble gum.

The inside of the room was no better. The walls were a pale bisque, while the carpet
looked, and felt, like dirty cotton candy.

"It's like I'm in the belly of a huge snake." Palmer groaned, eyeing the worn chenille
spread covering the queen-size mattress.

Sonja grunted and stared at the picture hanging over the bed. It was a cheap flea
market print of a Keane waif with huge eyes and a tiny mouth set into a simpering
pout. Snorting in disgust, Sonja yanked the offending artwork off the wall and
sailed it into a corner. She flopped heavily onto the bed. The box springs squealed in
protest.

Palmer was surprised by how tired she looked. In the week since their lives had
merged, Palmer had come to think of her as preternaturally energetic. She was
definitely the most intense woman he'd ever known. The sight of her sprawled
across the bed sparked a vague lust in him.

"I feel so old sometimes." Sonja lifted a hand to her brow, slowly rubbing her
forehead. "So horribly, horribly old. And I'm not even forty yet." Her laugh was
dry. "I wonder how the truly ancient ones feel? Vampires like Pangloss. They must

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be so very tired. I've heard that when they grow weary of continuing, they simply go
to sleep. A hibernation that lasts for years, decades. Sleep: the stepchild of Death."

Her voice had a smoky, far-away feel to it. Palmer wondered if she was aware she
was speaking aloud.

He sat next to her on the bed and stared at the worn carpet between his shoes.

"Sonja-what happened in that house?"

"I discovered I'm not alone."

"What?"

In a soft, weary voice she told him about Anise and Fell and Morgan's plan to breed
his own race of designer-gene vampires.

"And you left them there?
Alive?"

"You don't understand, Palmer..."

"You're damn right I don't understand! Why didn't you kill them?"

"I couldn't."

"Wouldn't, you mean!"

"No. Couldn't." Sonja removed her sunglasses, exposing her eyes to him for the first
time. "I don't fully understand it myself. I used to think I could reclaim what I once
was by killing what I'd become. It didn't work. Maybe it's time for me to build
instead of destroy. I've been lonely, Palmer. So terribly lonely."

Palmer forced himself to look into her eyes. She silently stiffened, squaring her
shoulders in preparation for rejection. The pupils were huge, dilated to maximize
even the feeblest light source. They were the eyes of a hybrid, neither human or
vampire. At first he was repulsed by how raw and inhuman they'd looked, but now
he could see a perverse beauty in them. Even without touching her mind, he knew
how much of herself she'd exposed to him simply by removing her glasses.

He kissed her without really knowing why, yet confident the action was genuinely
his. His hands slipped under her shirt, his fingers tracing old wounds. She arched
her back and moaned in pleasure. The way she stretched her lithe, tight body
reminded him of the panthers at the zoo-so beautiful and so deadly with their
predator's grace.

Her flesh was pale, marked by numerous scars. He closed his eyes and ran his hands
over her naked torso. He had expected to be repulsed by the sensation, but found
himself fascinated by the complex designs. It was like reading Braille; each scar a
story bonded forever to her flesh.

She helped him out of his clothes, her fingers tracing the scar over his heart. Palmer
felt a tremor of apprehension in the back of his mind, as memories of Loli's betrayal
surfaced then disappeared.

She closed around him like a velvet fist. Her arms and legs wrapped about his,
holding him fast. He knew he could not break free of her embrace, but he felt no
urge to escape. If she had wanted to force this upon him, she could have done it long
ago.

Her mind reached out and touched his, teasing it from its cage of bone. She laughed,
a telepathic bird song echoing inside his head, as she urged him to surrender both
body and mind to passion.

As he shucked his skin, the jungle surged behind his eyelids. He saw a beautiful

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woman with intricate ritual designs scratched into her cheeks and brow smiling at
him. The smell of burning copal filled his nostrils. Then he was free of his flesh, their
minds twining together like mating snakes.